1. Your Platinum Card's Membership Rewards will drop in value for Pay With Points redemptions on February 15, 2013 from 1.25 cents to 1 cent. This is pretty close to not being newsworthy, since Pay With Points is a bad deal at 1.25 cents. I'd rather transfer to Avios, Hawaiian Airlines, or even top off a Delta account before buying a cash ticket with Membership Rewards.

The Points Guy reports that you can call AMEX to cancel your Platinum card until December 30 at 800-525-3355 and receive a prorated refund of the $450 annual fee.

Prepaids are All the Rage--Add Another to the List (if You Live in New England)

Word on the street is that miles and points aficionados may be interested in prepaid debit cards. See How Much is Bluebird Really Worth? and my Bluebird Calculator.

The players involved have included the NetSpend card, Mio card, Wells Fargo prepaid card, US Bank and Nationwide Visa Buxx cards, and the American Express Prepaid card.

The Enhanced Business Gold Rewards Card from American Express OPEN

Get 30,000 Membership Rewards® points after you spend $5,000 in purchases with your new Card in the first 3 months following approval of your new Card account
Plus, get a statement credit for your initial Amazon Prime membership fee after you sign up for a new membership with your Card and meet the spending requirement in the same time period
As an Amazon Prime member, you get unlimited FREE Two-Day Shipping on millions of items on Amazon.com
Built with business-sized purchasing power and fast rewards
3X points on

I've talked before about the American Express Platinum personal card with its current sign up bonus worth $1,025, a rebate of 102.5% of the minimum spending requirement.  Click here for the top current credit card sign up bonuses.

One of the benefits that makes the Mercedes-Benz branded version of this card the current third biggest sign up bonus is that you can get $400 worth of airline fees reimbursed by American Express in your first year of being a cardholder.

That's because the $200 annual airline fee reimbursement is a calendar-year benefit.

For instance, I got my AMEX Platinum

1. Frugal Travel Guy posted an awesome rundown of the major credit-card issuers' rules on how far apart applications must be and how churnable their bonuses are. I have it bookmarked for my future use.

Today (9/12/12) only, American Express is doing one of its once-every-few-months, one-day-only 75k Membership Rewards sign up bonuses for the American Express Gold Business card.

I won't give a full rundown of the rules and benefits of the card--you can get that from thepointsguy--but I will answer the following question: should you get the 75k sign up bonus on this card or the 50k sign up bonus?

If the answer seems obvious, it is not.

This is another post in my Anatomy of an Award series, in which I take a real award I’ve booked and break it down step-by-step to elucidate the award booking process.

Hey there, you're reading an outdated post! The updated series from April 2015 can be found here.

This is the eleventh post in a monthlong series. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete.

This is another post in my Anatomy of an Award series, in which I take a real award I’ve booked and break it down step-by-step to elucidate the award booking process. If you have a real award you’d like to write up in a similar post, please contact me, and you can write a guest post.

Yesterday, I talked about transferring 10,000 Hawaiian Miles to 20,000 Hilton points.

Samir asks:
Hi Scott,
     I discovered your blog recently and am loving it. Your miles-related knowledge is pretty impressive and I most definitely appreciate the tips/advice I have gotten from your site so far. Needless to say, I have started reading your site daily. 
     Anyway, I have an issue that I was hoping you could help me out with. Last summer, I signed up for the AMEX Premier Rewards Gold card when it had a nice signup bonus at the time.