4. Statement Credit Hassles
The Amex Gold offers two different credits that are worth up to $120 each per year. The first is an Uber Cash benefit and the other is a Dining Credit that can be used with Grubhub, The Cheesecake Factory, Goldbelly, Wine.com, Milk Bar and select Shake Shack locations after enrollment.
Add up those two $120 credits and you get a total of $240 in available statement credits per year. That nearly cancels out the card’s $250 annual fee before you even earn any rewards. Sounds great, right?
In reality, it can be more difficult to use those credits than you might think. Here are three discoveries I made during my first few months with the Amex Gold that are worth bearing in mind if you decide to get the card yourself.
Monthly Credits Require More Ongoing Work Than Annual Credits.
Those $120 credits are broken up into $10 monthly increments. They don’t roll over either so you have to be vigilant to use them before the end of each month. If you don’t, you just lose them and can’t get them back.
This is different from the annual travel credits that are offered with mid-range travel cards like the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card or the Citi Premier® Card. With those credits, you can use the entire amount at any time during the year which gives you a lot more flexibility.
There were a couple of months that I forgot to use one or both of my Amex Gold credits. Inevitably, I would realize a day or two into the next month that I had let them go to waste and I’d get really annoyed.
Eventually I resorted to creating reminders on my phone to use them. Yes I know that sounds ridiculous and it’s fine if you want to laugh. All I can say is it solved the problem for me and I’m much happier for it.
Authorized User Cards Don’t Qualify for the Uber Cash Benefit.
Something else that I learned the hard way was that the Uber Cash benefit only applies to the primary card member. Initially, I added my wife’s authorized user card to our Uber account and waited impatiently for our $10 in Uber Cash to arrive. After a few days, I finally called Amex customer service to find out why it wasn’t showing up.
Unfortunately, the representative I spoke to gave me the wrong information. She said I needed to make a qualifying Uber or Uber Eats transaction and the $10 credit would hit my account a few days later. So I ordered a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts through Uber Eats (don’t judge) and waited for my credit to arrive. It never did because that’s not how the Uber Cash benefit works.
Once you’ve added an eligible Amex Gold card to your Uber account, the Uber Cash will show up in your wallet. The problem was that I wasn’t adding an eligible card since we had added my wife’s card instead of my own.
After doing some more digging, I finally figured this out. I switched my Uber account payment method to my Amex Gold card and, just like that, the $10 in Uber Cash showed up a few minutes later. I haven’t had any hiccups since, but it was still a frustrating start.
Credits Aren’t Really Money-Savers if You Have To Spend More To Use Them.
Even with reminders set and the right card on file, it took some creativity to find smart ways to use my credits without adding costs that I normally wouldn’t pay. Admittedly, this was partly a function of where I live. While I love The Cheesecake Factory and Shake Shack, the closest location for each is about an hour away from me in the Orlando, Florida area.
Our family visits Orlando fairly often and there have been a couple times where it worked out for us to eat at those restaurants while we were there. However, I wouldn’t want to make a special trip to Orlando just to use a statement credit. The extra money spent in gas would cancel out the $10 I’d save on the meal.
I also wouldn’t normally order cakes, wine or food gifts from the likes of Goldbelly, Wine.com or Milk Bar. So, again, ordering from any of those sites would strictly be so that I could use my Amex Gold Dining Credit. But if that’s money I wouldn’t normally spend, is the card really saving me money? I say no.
So that leaves Grubhub. Unless you’re a Gruhub+ member, you’ll pay a fee for delivery orders in addition to whatever tip you leave for your driver. Yet again, I’d be spending more to “save.” This same issue applies, by the way, to making an Uber Eats delivery order to utilize your Uber Cash benefit.
So what can you do to avoid paying extra costs in months that you aren’t already spending money with Uber or at eligible restaurants? For me, the solution has been to make pickup orders through Grubhub and UberEats. With no delivery fees tacked on, the two $10 credits essentially get me two free lunches per month. That works for me.
Those who live closer to a metro area may have an easier time using their Amex Gold credits each month. But if you’re a suburb-dweller like me, you’ll want to make sure you have your own plan for utilizing them in a way that translates to true savings.
5. Low Yields on Non-Transfer Redemptions
As a long-time Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card cardholder, I’ve been spoiled with its variety of strong redemption options. I can redeem my Chase Ultimate Rewards points for cash at any time at a value of 1 cent per point. Or I can get 25% more value from my points when I use them to make bookings on the Chase travel portal.
The ThankYou Points that I earn with my Citi Premier® Card also redeem at 1 cent per point for cash or any travel booked through Citi Travel. As an Amex Gold card member, however, I’ll only get 0.60 cents per point should I decide to use my points to cover card charges. And with the exception of flights, I’ll get just 0.70 cents per point if I use my Membership Rewards to book travel through the Amex Travel portal.
As already discussed, I can still get great value from my points by transferring them to travel partners which is what I’ve done and will continue to do. I can also use my Amex points to book flights through Amex Travel at a value of 1 cent per point.
Still, I didn’t realize how hard it would be to find other high-value redemptions for my Amex Gold points. I was focused on the earnings potential of the card and just assumed that the redemption options for Membership Rewards would be similar to its top competitors. It turns out that I was wrong.
6. The Disappointing Hotel Collection
The Hotel Collection sounds really awesome on paper. When you book an eligible hotel stay, you’ll get an automatic upgrade and a $100 experience credit for things like qualifying dining or spa activities.
I figured that even if I only used the $100 Hotel Collection benefit twice, I’d get an extra $200 of value out of my card membership. The problem is that there are less than 800 hotels in the world that qualify for these benefits and those that do tend to be high-end and pricey.
I was hoping to book a Hotel Collection property for a getaway that my wife and I had planned for last May. I was only able to find one eligible hotel in Tampa and just three more after widening my search to include Clearwater Beach which is about 40 minutes away. All four properties cost much more per night than we had planned to spend.
I considered splurging by staying our first night at one of these hotels and then somewhere else our 2nd night. But you have to stay a minimum of two nights to get the Hotel Collection benefits. I finally decided that it didn’t make sense to pay hundreds of dollars more for a hotel just so we could get a $100 experience credit and a room upgrade.
We ended up booking two nights at a Hyatt property using World of Hyatt points instead. In the six months that I’ve had the Amex Gold, I’ve yet to utilize the Hotel Collection benefit. Maybe I’ll get to use it at some point, but I’m not holding my breath.
