My mother recently received an email offer for an American Express SkyMiles credit card with the subject line, “Your Amazing Offer has Arrived.” Here it is:
The quick read indicates you will get “up to 25,000 miles”, which is divided into seemingly two miles deposits: 20,000 up front and 5,000 more if you add more cardmembers.
*Mouse Print: The additional 5,000 miles has an unexpected twist found in footnote #2.
2,500 bonus miles will be awarded to your Delta SkyMiles account for each approved Additional Card submitted with this application, up to a maximum of 5,000 bonus miles.
One might reasonably have assumed that adding a single additional cardmember to your account would have triggered the extra 5,000 miles bonus.
On the same day that my mother received this offer, I also received an email entitled, “Your Amazing Offer has Arrived.” Here is what mine said:
So, I must be twice as amazing as my mother since I was being offered 40,000 miles instead of 20,000 (as she has no one to give another card to).
This is a terrible slight on my mother, who is a saint. In fact, she has been dead for three and half years.
Maybe if credit card companies spent more money cleaning up their mass mailing lists (or better vetting potential customers rather than granting credit to all and every), they wouldn’t have to charge such high rates of interest to make up for credite defaults and to line their own pockets!
Believe that depends on the card you get. Some will charge an annual fee for AMEX and some will not. Sometimes a prefered card comes with extra perks and a fee. Avoid them. Not worth it. Play the game. I currently have a US Bank World Perks card (NWA), a Chase card (Continental) and a AMEX (Delta). All three had offers of 20,000 bonus miles and no fee the first year. I just canceled my Citi Card (AA) since the first year was up and now a fee kicks in. Got my 20,000 bonus miles. Here’s the beauty of most of these offers. After you cancel wait a month and apply for another. You’ll get it and 20,000 bonus miles. With AMEX wait a year since they track this stuff. My wife does the same and we fly cross country twice a yera First Class and we still have a bundle in each airline account sine we charge everything and pay it off pronto.
My Mother passed away over 10 years ago and still gets credit card offers and other junk mail. However, regarding the skymiles card, I also got the offer for 40,000 miles but the caveat on mine was that if I had ever had a delta skymiles card previously I would only receive the bonus 15000 miles and not the 40000. a year or so ago I did get the card, got the 25000 miles, used it for a free ticket to Salt Lake City and then cancelled the card so I guess they are finally catching on to “Miles Junkies” like me.