American Express Gold card is good but even better with a retention offer. Initially, I was offered a 15,000 points retention offer for spending $2k within 3 months. I still had some time until 30 days from renewal charge day, so I chose to not accept the offer.
Then close to if not past few days after the 30-day period I tried again and was offered 15,000 offer again. I chose not to accept again.
Then, I recently tried again and was offered 30,000 for spending $3,000 in 3 months.
Closing Thoughts
The key message is that retention offers can increase after the renewal period so if you feel like you could get a better offer, then try your luck and ask few days/weeks later. This may backfire as you may have to pay 1 month of annual fee, even after downgrade and cancel trick. Also, I typically check Flyertalk to see what kind of retention offers are out there for the specific card I am seeking retention on…and to my surprise, 30k wasn’t listed there. The listed gold offer are 10k, 15k, and 20k…so I was really gunning for a 20k offer.
