AmEx math
American Express keeps trying to give me a Blue travel rewards card. Let’s do some math on their rewards terms:
First, they have this “exclusive” offer which pretty much advertises their dinky rewards terms:
7,500 bonus points, equivalent to a $100 statement credit, that you can redeem for airline tickets, hotel stays, or any other type of travel —- after your first $500 in purchases.
Following the little superscript number to the footnote at the end, we find out that the “$500 in purchases” must be made within the first two months.
The footnote underneath that reveals that $1 in purchases = 1 point.
The footnote underneath that reveals that you can only redeem points once you’ve accrued 7,500 points, which means spending $7,500 on your card. At the rate of $100 in rewards per $7,500 spent, that is a 1.33% cashback on purchases.
Nuts to that $1 = 1 point business.
