Negative Change for Amex Uber Credits

Negative Change for Amex Uber Credits

American Express offers monthly Uber credits for Amex Platinum and Amex Gold cardholders. These credits can be used for Uber rides or Uber Eats orders. But now there’s a negative change announced for early November that will possibly make these credits harder to use. 

Amex Uber Credits

As I mentioned above, Amex Platinum and Amex Gold cardholders get monthly Uber credits.

• Platinum Card: Receive $15 in Uber Cash to use on eligible orders with Uber Eats and rides with Uber in the US every month plus a bonus $20 in December. That’s up to $200 for Uber orders with Uber Eats and rides with Uber annually. You’ll also become an Uber VIP.
• Gold Card: Receive $10 in Uber Cash to use on eligible orders with Uber Eats and rides with Uber in the US every month. That’s up to $200 for Uber orders with Uber Eats and rides with Uber annually.

To get these credits, you just need to add these eligible cards to your Uber account.

What’s Changing

Currently it is easy to stack these credits if you have more than one eligible credit card. You just add two or more cards to the same Uber accounts and you will have multiple credits available that can be used together on the same order or ride.

So let’s you have an Amex Platinum and Amex Gold Card, and place a $50 order. Your $25 in credits for the months will be used first and the rest will be charged on whichever card you choose to use.

But now you will see the following notice in the benefit terms (HT: reddit):

Please note: To utilize your Monthly Premium Benefits, you’ll need to select your Amex card as your payment method for trips/orders starting November 8th, 2024.

With this change, you will need to use one of those two cards in order to use the Uber credits in the same order. That’s a negative change as you might have another card that earns a better rate on these purchases.

But more importantly, it could also mean that the credit will be broken up. That’s not immediately clear from this message, but hopefully it doesn’t work that way. If they decide to break up these credits then you would have to use the Amex Gold card to get the $10 discount, and the Amex Platinum to get the $15 discount separately. That would be a huge devaluation considering that you have to pay fees for two or more orders.

Guru’s Wrap-up

This looks like bad news, but we’ll have to wait and November to see how it will exactly work. Hopefully Amex Uber credits are not broken up and you can still stack them with each other and other credits. 

Having to use an eligible Amex card is still annoying, but not a huge deal. It is however another step in what seems an Amex strategy to make all these monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual credits harder to use.