October 23, 2016

Amex Platinum Travel Credit Amazon Trick Still Works

One of the great benefits of the Amex Platinum card is the annual $200 airline incidental credit.  This reduces the annual fee from $450 to $250 and in the first year, actually pays you back $50 since you'll get the credit twice (it's a calendar year credit) for one annual fee.  That only works if you value airline fees as cash.  You can go one step further and buy airline gift cards which are pretty darn close to as good as cash.

But there's another way to actually get Amazon gift cards reimbursed if United is your selected airline.  Wait, what?  That's way closer to actual cash than airline gift cards for most people.

I read about this trick in 2015 and was successfully used it earlier in the year.  We picked up another Amex Platinum card earlier in the month and gave it another shot to see if the trick still works.  I can confirm that it does!

Amazon Gift Card Purchases
Amex Platinum Travel Credit
Here are the steps:

1)  Download the United MileagePlus X app on your phone
2)  Add your Amex Platinum card as a payment method.
3)  Go to the home screen and click on Amazon
4)  Buy a gift card (I started with $50 increments to be sure) and add to your Amazon account
5)  Check your Amex statement for reimbursement

Click on Amazon

Click "Pay Now"

Enter the amount

This time around, I purchased four $50 Amazon gift cards and sure enough...credits posted two days later.  If United's your airline of choice (or if you just select them as your airline for this purpose) you can easily get $200 worth of Amazon gift cards for free!  You'll also earn 1-2 United miles per dollar for shopping through the app and at least (possible you earn 5x on the Platinum personal card) 1x American Express Membership Rewards points.

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