American Express & Point.me Partnership
Some interesting news came out today about a new American Express & Point.me partnership. It seems to be very similar to the Point.me & Bilt partnership that was announced earlier this year. This could add some value to select American Express cardholders, since Point.me is usually a paid service. The partnership will be more limited overall, versus the paid option, and there are some issues with the service. More on that in a bit though.
*Note that I could not get this to work & there appears to be some glitches in the matrix right now. Hopefully it will be up and running soon for people to try out.
What Is Point.me?
Point.me is an award search program that allows you to check multiple airline programs all at once for award space. You can sign up for an annual membership for $129 or get a 24 hour pass for $5. A lot of people do the day pass when they have a glut of award searches / trips to plan out.
I have used the service occasionally in the past, most notably when we pivoted from Hawaii to Christmas Markets in Europe last minute. It came in handy since I had to search a lot of potential routes in a short amount of time. That was all thanks to my wife's last minute change, but it was her birthday trip after all.
Having said that, I know that the ToP team has poked around with it a bit and found that it finds phantom space, or misses space all together, quite often. It is still best to perform your own searches because of that. If you are in a time crunch then this could be useful. However, unless you know how to perform your own searches you won't know whether this is even useful or not for your needs. At that point it would become a crutch instead of a tool. Okay, time to get off the soapbox.
American Express & Point.me Partnership Details
Here are the details of the American Express & Point.me partnership for those times when you are in a bind and the service could help. The partnership allows eligible cardholders to use Point.me for free, for all of Amex's partner airlines. Those partners include:
- Aer Lingus
- AeroMexico
- Air Canada
- Air France / KLM
- ANA
- Avianca
- British Airways
- Cathay Pacific
- Delta
- Emirates
- Etihad
- Hawaiian Airlines
- Iberia
- jetBlue
- Qantas
- Singapore Airlines
- Virgin Atlantic
To access this American Express & Point.me partnership program you will need to go to amex.point.me and login with your Amex credentials. You will then be able to search award space for any of the airlines listed above, and their partners, should you carry an approved Amex credit card (Membership Rewards earning).
American Express & Point.me Partnership: ToP Thoughts
While the American Express & Point.me partnership adds some value for Membership Rewards earning cardmembers, the question remains just how much. American Express has a plethora of transfer partners, no doubt, but they don't cover all options. Because of that don't fall victim to the crutch of this service and start missing out on better potential routings. You still need to learn the basics of searching your own award flights before diving into services like this. That is true, even if they are free.
