If you are a savvy Amazon shopper that also has rewards credit cards, you are no doubt familiar with the “Pay One Point” offers.
We have a compilation of Amazon Pay One Point offers that we update regularly, and last week during a two day “Prime Days” sale, we found a new round of offers from American Express Membership Rewards.
These offers generally let you (if you have a linked rewards card and are targeted) redeem just one point in order to get a variable discount which could be 15%, $15, 40% or $60 (with a minimum purchase). Those are obviously no brainers. Even if you only get 15% off up to $100 in spend, you are getting $15 off total – and these can be spread out over multiple purchases though they will expire at an unknown time so it’s best to not sit on them too long.
(This is the Amex link to check if you are targeted. We may earn a commission on items purchased from Amazon when you use our links. Thanks for your support if you do.)
Amex first floated a trial balloon of requiring 714 points instead of one point a couple of years ago, but then they went away and we went back to one point. This makes the math harder because we value 714 Amex MR points at about $12 using a value per point of 1.7 cents. That value assumes using Amex airline/hotel transfer partners for max value.
But Amazon will only redeem those same 714 point for $5. So you are spending about $12 to get $5 off, a delta of $7.
That means that you need to evaluate your own deal to see if it’s worthwhile.
This is the deal I just got:
Put another way, 40% off up to $60 with 714 points means I can get 40% off up to $150 which maximizes that $60 off. I do have to spend $7 net in points (use $12 in points; get $5 off). That brings me to a still *very* profitable $53 back. Even if I needed to split the purchase in two because I didn’t have $150 to spend in one shot, I could still justify spending $14 to save $60.
But what if my offer was the much less desirable 15% off, up to $15, when you spend 714 points?
It’s easy to completely dismiss that, right? Well, the truth is that I’d feel like I got a horrible deal, but I’d do it anyway.
The math would simply be worse. I’d spend $7 (again, I’m spending $12 worth of points but getting $5 off at checkout) and save $15. That’s still $8 free. Worth breaking a sweat over? Not really. Do it or don’t. But the point is that even this “worst offer” is worth $8.
The catch on that is that you do need to spend most or all of the offer in one shot for it to be worthwhile. If you spend less than $50 for 15% off, that’s the breakeven to actually lose money doing it, so don’t do that!
Caveat: if you always spend your Amex points for twice our average of 1.7 cents each, for an average of 3.4 cents each, or if you have very few Amex points and are saving for a premium cabin redemption, I would say to save your points rather than burn them on the 15% offer.
Why did I write all this? Because when I posted the offers last week, there seemed to be a lot of confusion about if the deal was still a deal or if it was completely worthless, so I thought I’d break down the nuance.
If you didn’t do the deal during Prime Days, don’t worry… the Pay One or Pay 714 Points deals didn’t expire then, so you can still check if you are targeted. And if you need some help on the math, come on back 🙂
Thoughts?
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