An excellent upgrade offer for select holders of the Amex EveryDay Card

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In the hubbub of the miles & points world, it can be easy to forget that credit card welcome bonuses aren’t the only good way to give your points balances a sudden and often much-needed boost. Upgrade offers can be incredibly useful too, and right now, American Express is targeting select holders of the Amex EveryDay® Card for a valuable upgrade offer that’s going to be hard to pass up.

The Amex EveryDay® Card is a no annual fee credit card that’s just about as basic as credit cards come. It offers cardholders 2 points per dollar on up to $6,000 of U.S. supermarket spending per year, 1 point per dollar on all other eligible purchases, and a 20% points bonus in each billing period that a cardholder uses their card 20 times or more (terms apply).

Note: All information about the Amex EveryDay® Card and the Amex EveryDay® Preferred Card has been collected independently by Traveling For Miles. The Amex EveryDay® Card and the Amex EveryDay® Preferred Card are not currently available through Traveling For Miles.

I hold the Amex EveryDay® Card but I rarely use it anymore. I don’t use it much because my Citi Premier Card has become my preferred card to use for all my supermarket and grocery spending and because if I need Membership Rewards Points, I have my Platinum Card® from American Express (review) and my Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express (review) to fall back on.

I keep the card because it has a high credit line that may someday come in useful, because it costs me nothing to hold, and because it gives me another card on which I may be targeted for some good Amex Offers.

Now, however, I’m probably going to upgrade it.

The upgrade offer

When I log into my Amex account, I don’t see any upgrade offer under the Amex Offers section and when I check the “view all credit cards” area of the Amex website (while logged in) all I see is this:

15,000 Membership Rewards points to upgrade to the Amex EveryDay® Preferred Card isn’t a bad offer, but it’s not exactly exciting either. What is considerably more exciting is the offer that dropped into my inbox yesterday afternoon:

As the upgrade offer shows, the Amex EveryDay® Preferred Card earns 3 points per dollar on up to $6,000 of U.S. supermarket spending per year, 2 points/dollar on spending at U.S. gas stations, and 1 point per dollar on all other eligible purchases as well as offering a 50% points bonus in each billing period that a cardholder uses their card 30 times or more (terms apply).

For an annual fee of $95 (rates & fees), that’s not bad if you happen to be a fan of Membership Rewards points, need a good card for U.S. supermarket spending, and don’t generally spend more than $6,000/year at U.S. supermarkets. If like me, however, you already hold the Citi Premier Card, that’s not a compelling set of earning rates.

That’s why I don’t see this upgrade offer as an opportunity to get a credit card that I expect to be using a lot. Instead, I’m looking at this offer as an opportunity to, effectively, buy 40,000 Membership Rewards Points for the cost of the Amex EveryDay® Preferred Card’s annual fee – $95.

If I decide to take up this offer and upgrade to the Amex EveryDay® Preferred Card, I’ll probably keep the new card for a year* and then downgrade it back to the card that I hold now unless I discover that I suddenly have a good use for it.

40,000 points at a cost of $95 would see me “buying” Membership Rewards Points at just 0.24 cents each and as I value Membership Rewards Points at 1.5 cents each (based on the value that I know I can get out of them with relative ease), I see that as a fantastic deal that I’m unlikely to pass up.

Just the other day, I wrote a post explaining that I wasn’t ready to apply for the excellent Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card because even though its fantastic 100,000 welcome offer is soon to be pulled, I didn’t want to have to spend $10,000 across the next 6 months to lock that welcome offer in. Here, however, I’m being given the same 6 month period in which to spend just $2,000 in order to earn 40,000 Membership Rewards Points and that’s a target that I’m much happier trying to hit. In fact, it’s a target that I’ll be able to hit with ease and while earning at least 3 points for every dollar I spend.

What this all means is that if I apply for this upgrade, I should find myself earning a total of at least 46,000 Membership Rewards Points after I spend $2,000 on the Amex EveryDay® Preferred Card and assuming a valuation of 1.5 cents/point, that comes to a total return of $690. That could be viewed as a 34.5% rebate on my spending and I like the sound of that!

Better yet, as I value Amex Membership Rewards Points and Citi ThinkYou Points equally, by transferring my U.S. supermarket spending to the Amex EveryDay® Preferred Card from my Citi Premier Card, I won’t be giving up any earnings elsewhere – I’ll just be substituting one currency that I value at 1.5 cents each for another …and that’s the icing on the cake 🙂

Checking for the upgrade

If you hold the Amex EveryDay® Card and haven’t received an email offering you this upgrade, it could be worth calling the number on the back of your card and asking a representative what upgrade offers they can see targeted to your account.

You could also search your spam/junk folders as well as your inboxes for an email with a subject line that reads “You’re invited to upgrade and earn 40,000 points”.

Don’t forget that just because you can’t see this upgrade offer in your online account doesn’t mean that you haven’t been targeted for it (I can’t see this offer in my online account and I’ve definitely been targeted), so a call to Amex could be very worthwhile.

Note: The email I received says that the targeted offer is available (to me) through 31 May 2022.

Bottom line

American Express is currently targeting select holders of the Amex EveryDay® Card for an upgrade offer worth 40,000 points. With the spending target for the 40,000 points set at just $2,000 and with targeted cardholders being given 6 months to hit that spending milestone, this is one of the better upgrade offers I’ve seen of late and for me, it’s one that’s going to be very hard to pass up.

*Amex’s terms and conditions indicate that if I was to downgrade within 12 months of upgrading to the Preferred card, I could lose the 40,000 points, have all my other points frozen, and have one or more of my Amex cards cancelled. That’s not a scenario that I ever want to face!

The featured image is a screenshot from the email Amex is sending out to targeted cardholders.