Card News: New Uber Benefit Added to the AMEX Gold Card & Free Eats Pass for AMEX Green, Gold and Platinum Cards

The American Express (AMEX) Gold Card has an annual fee of $250 that is not waived during the first year. Alike the AMEX Platinum Card, the AMEX Gold Card comes with useful benefits to offset the annual fee. It comes with standard benefits such as trip delay protection, ShopRunner perks, lost baggage protection, and no foreign transaction fees, but the primary perks to effectively reduce the annual fee are the $120 dining credit and $100 airline credit.

The AMEX Gold Card is undergoing changes to its benefits. Photo credit: www.americanexpress.com

The $120 dining credit is broken into $10 per month that can be used at Grubhub, Seamless, The Cheesecake Factory, Ruth’s Chris Steak House, some Shake Shack locations, and Boxed. The other benefit is the $100 airline credit, which is given every calendar year. Every January or upon receiving the card, cardmembers can choose an airline, and you can use the credit towards incidental fees such as checked baggage, in-flight amenities & entertainment (excluding airplane WiFi), ticket change fees, etc. Because the airline credit only covers incidental fees, it has been criticized by many cardholders for its restrictive terms and conditions. I did wish AMEX would adjust the policy to cover any travel-related expenses like travel credits of the Citi Prestige Card or the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card, but to everyone’s surprise, AMEX decided to remove the $100 airline credit from the Gold Card by the end of 2021 and replace it with a new benefit. Starting on February 1, 2021, the Gold Card will get $120 in Uber Cash annually. Alike the $120 dining credit, the $120 Uber credit will be broken into $10 per month that can be used towards Uber rides or Uber Eats.

Photo credit: www.americanexpress.com

If you’d like to apply for the AMEX Gold Card, please consider using my referral link. It will continue to help fund my blog operations and help visitors make informed decisions to maximize their rewards. Thank you! http://refer.amex.us/EDWARS3dEu?XLINK=MYCP

The collaboration with Uber didn’t stop there. AMEX added that cardmember of the AMEX Platinum, Gold, and Green Cards will receive complimentary one-year membership of Eats Pass. Because the monthly Eats Pass membership costs $9.99, the yearly benefit is worth about $120. All cardholders can enroll in the benefit now through December 2021, and the clock will start ticking when you sign up for the benefit. After the trial period is over, Uber Eats will automatically bill subscribers so make sure you cancel it before the one-year mark, if you wish to discontinue it.

Adding both the $120 Uber credit and free Eats Pass membership to the Gold Card makes it an even better dining card.

For those who are not familiar with Eats Pass, it is a monthly subscription service through Uber Eats. Eats Pass subscribers receive unlimited free deliveries from restaurants and with food orders over $15, an additional 5% discount is automatically applied. If you use it for groceries, in select markets, a delivery fee is waived on orders over $30. Note that this is a temporary benefit, though AMEX may permanently extend it or adjust it after the trial period ends.

Get your meals delivered for free with the new Eats Pass benefit.

In my opinion, replacing the $100 airline credit from the AMEX Gold Card with the $120 Uber credit makes a lot of sense. The Gold Card has one of the best grocery and dining multipliers in the industry, and enhancing what the card is good at just makes sense. The addition of Eats Pass is great for the Gold Card and the Platinum Card users since they have the $120 and $200 credits, respectively. Though I don’t value the new Eats Pass benefit at 100%. it will certainly help AMEX attract new customers and retain the existing ones. In addition, I personally don’t understand why it is being added to the Green Card. If anything, this puts the Green Card at an awkward spot; It does earn 3X MR points towards dining, but the $100 CLEAR credit and the $100 LoungeBuddy credit are basically useless, at least for 2021. I presume having a new benefit for free is better than nothing, but AMEX will seriously need to restructure the Green Card soon if they don’t want to lose more customers. I recently canceled my AMEX Green Card for that exact reason.

Will the Eats Pass benefit stay after the promotional period is over?

The overlap of the airline and the Uber credits makes 2021 the best time to apply for the Gold Card. Had you applied in December 2020, you could’ve received the airline benefit twice ($200) but if you were to apply now, you can still get the $100 airline benefit before it goes away at the end of 2021. Overall, I am glad to see AMEX is constantly competing and adapting to the changes to stay afloat. Even though I prefer the airline benefit for my AMEX Gold Card, further improving its strength makes a lot of sense. The complimentary Eats Pass benefit is nice and will work in favor of both attracting new customers and retaining the current ones, and I am curious what will happen to it after the trial period is over.

If you’d like to apply for the AMEX Gold Card, please consider using my referral link. It will continue to help fund my blog operations and help visitors make informed decisions to maximize their rewards. Thank you! http://refer.amex.us/EDWARS3dEu?XLINK=MYCP