American Express is not currently on my nice list. One of my grievances with them is the hoops they make you jump through to claim benefits their cards provide. AMEX’s newest trick is giving credits but splitting them up over the year. Whether it’s the UBER credit for the Platinum Card or the dining credit for the Gold Card, you get credits for the month that do not roll over if not used. Any month skipped is breakage, or a benefit not used for which AMEX keeps the money.
This is why I’ve felt for a while that AMEX statement credits are not the same as cash. Even when American Express added benefits to their cards to supplement the travel credits which are currently hard to use, they provided them as a monthly statement credit. So you can save $10-$20 a month on your wireless bill but you need to remember to charge your card every month until the end of the year.
Those credits are only for AMEX’s charge cards marketed towards travelers. The rest of AMEX’s customers only received added points earning at supermarkets.
That was until now. Calm, the relaxation and meditation website/app, has partnered with AMEX to provide a free premium membership to all cardholders. It’s for almost all AMEX cards, even those issued by third parties.
You do have to sign up for a subscription that will auto-renew if not canceled. If you want to keep the service, the first renewal price will be 1/2 price.
This is a great partnership for the moment as everyone is a little stressed out and needs some help relaxing. I’ve thought about getting the Calm app for my phone but never got around to it. At home, we listen to spa music as we’re falling asleep and I have a Spotify sleep playlist for when we’re traveling.
A Calm Premium membership usually costs $69.99 per year, so this is a great benefit to get for a year. If you already have a membership, you can’t stack this free membership so you’ll need to cancel your paid membership and then sign up for the free one, so you’d might want to wait until September to get the most out of the offer.
To take advantage of the offer, you need to register through the offer homepage, https://www.calm.com/americanexpress
Signing up is really easy. It took less than five minutes. I first had to set up a Calm account. This required my email and setting a password (I never log into anything with my Facebook info!)
After setting up the account, I had to enter my American Express number to validate my membership. I used my Optima Platinum card, the most basic AMEX card I have, to try and confirm that any card would work.
That was it. My free membership is good until next year.
Here are the links to the offer FAQ and Terms and Conditions. The one thing I thought was interesting is that the offer is open to one membership per AMEX card. So if you have 10 AMEX cards, you can open 10 Calm accounts. That’s good if you want to have separate memberships for everyone in your family.
I could be cynical and say that AMEX has put us through so much that it’s only right they pay for a subscription to a relaxation website. 🙂 Instead, I’ll be happy that they’ve added a benefit for all of their cardholders that’s easy to use. I guess the Calm app is working already.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
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