Just like with the Platinum Card by American Express for Ameriprise Financial, it has already been another year that I’ve held the American Express Everyday Preferred Card. As such, the one-year mark is when an important decision must be made about the card: keep it or cancel it before the $95 annual fees hits?
My Retention Offer for the American Express Everyday Preferred Card:
Before making any “keep or cancel” decision, I’ve found it wise to always call the card company and see if there are any retention offers available.
I called the American Express Retention Line at 1-800-452-3945. I quickly got a representative, told her I was trying to determine if I should keep the card, and asked her straight-up if there were any retention offers available to me.
Immediately she came back and said, “yes, there are two offers”. After reminding me that the offers she was about to read aloud were based on a variety of factors (including, but not limited to: annual spending on the card, years of card membership, credit history, etc.), she came back with the following:
Offer #1: 2,500 Membership Rewards points now, with an additional 5,000 points after spending $1,000 within 90 days.
Offer #2: $50 credit after spending $1,000 in the next 90 days.
Note: I had about $6,000+ worth of spending on this card during year the last year.
To Keep Or Cancel?
I actually find great value in this card and find it to be one of the “go-to cards” in my arsenal due to the wide ranging bonus categories it has and it’s magical ability to earn 4.5 points on groceries.
This is also a great card to add authorized users to because of the 50% extra earning potential when you have 30 or more transactions in a billing period and because its free to do so.
Which Retention Offer Did I Choose?
By my math, I valued Offer #1 [conservatively] at $75, and Offer #2 at $50.
Obviously, I went with Offer #1 as I could now offset my annual $95 annual fee by $75. It should be noted that the valuable Amex Offers garnered me $133.84 last year…so I’ll easily come out ahead on the the $20 bucks leftover that I owe on the annual fee.
Here’s The Math On The Annual Fee:
$95 annul fee + 7,500 Membership rewards points + $133.84 in Amex Offers = $113.84 net gain on the year.
The Bottom Line on My Retention Offer for the American Express Everyday Preferred Card:
As you can see, retention offers can be more than worth a call if you are the fence about keeping or canceling your card.
In this case, I got another year of an effective negative annual fee courtesy of the retention offer and Amex Offers for the American Express Everyday Preferred card.
Of course, next year I’ll have to repeat this process. But for now, I’m keeping this card.
Cheers!
