[DISCONTINUED] American Express ChoicePlus Card

I just sneaked in my application a few days before the American Express ChoicePlus and American Express Choice Cards were cancelled. I am a big fan of the American Express Membership Rewards program because it gives you flexible and transferable rewards. Below were the highlights of each card:

American Express ChoicePlus Card

• $65 annual fee
• No fee for supplementary cards
• Earn 12,000 points on your first purchase
• Earn 2 points for every $1 spent at 5 chosen places from a list of select American Express merchants
• Earn 1 point for every $1 spent on all other purchases

American Express Choice Card

• No annual fee
• No fee for supplementary cards
• Earn 1,500 points on your first purchase
• Earn 1 point for every $1 spent at 5 chosen places from a list of select American Express merchants
• Earn 1 Point for every $2 spent on all other purchases

I have the American Express Gold Rewards Card that earns Membership Rewards points, but it comes with a $150 annual fee (first year fee waived). I’m not sure I am going to be willing to continuously pay the annual fee every year. Therefore, the American Express Choice Card with no annual fee made sense for me.

I also learned that the Membership Rewards program for each respective credit cards (Gold vs. Choice) have a different rewards program. The Gold credit card has 8 frequent flier and hotel transfer partners, but the Choice card only has 3 partners (SPG, Hilton and Aeroplan), which are still useful to me.

Below were the list of stores that you could have chosen from:

• UPDATE-Note that if you have this credit card some of the partners may have changed.

Travel: Air Canada, Air Transat, Nolitours, Avis, Best Western, Budget, Carnival Cruise Lines, Celebrity Cruises, Coast Hotels, Enterprise, Rent-A-Car, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, Flight Centre, Hertz, Hilton Hotels & Resorts, Hilton Homewood Suites, Hilton Garden Inn, Hampton Inn Hotels, Embassy Suites Hotels, Doubletree Hotels, Porter Airlines, Princess Cruises, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Holiday Inn Hotels, Intercontinental Hotels, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Candlewood Suites, Staybridge Suites, Sunwing Tours, Thrifty, Westjet, Westcorp Hotels

Home And Entertainment: Apple, Best Buy, Future Shop, Cineplex Entertainment, Famous Players, Alliance, Atlantis Cinemas, Galaxy Entertainment, Clublink, Crate & Barrel, Dell, Home Depot, Home Hardware, Leon’s, Lowe’s, Mirvish, Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, Rona, Sleep Country Canada, Staples, The Brick, Urban Barn, Visions Electronics, West Elm, William Ashley, Williams Sonoma

Retail: Aldo, American Eagle Outfitters, Ben Moss, Birks, Browns, Canada Post, Purolator, Atmosphere, Coast Mountain Sports, National Sports, Nevada Bob’s Golf, Sport Chek, Sport Mart, Sports Experts, Athletes World , Fitness Source, Gen-X, Sports Inc, Podium, Rnr Outdoors, H&M, Homesav, Homesense, Indigo, Chapters, Coles, Calendar Club Of Canada, Kobo, Indochino, Lululemon, Marshall’s, Reitmans, Rw & Co, Smart Set, Thyme Maternity, Addition-Elle, Penningtons, Roots
Sears, Sporting Life, Stylesense, The Bay, Home Outfitters, Toy’s R Us, Babies R Us, Victoria’s Secret, Bath And Body Works, Pink, La Senza, Walmart, Winners

Dining: Browns Socialhouse, Earls Kitchen & Bar, Alice Fazooli’s, Jack Astor’s, Canyon Creek Chophouse, Second City, Loose Change Charlies, The Keg, Hy’s Steakhouses, Mcdonald’s, Bymark, Fabbrica, North 44°, One Restaurant, Moxie’s Classic Grill, Chop Restaurants, Dennys,Revelstoke Mountain Resort, Sandman Hotels & Inns, Shark Clubs Of Canada, The Shark Club Of Langley, Oliver & Bonacini Restaurants, Pickle Barrel, Harvey’s, Kelsey’s, Milestone’s, Montana’s, Swiss Chalet, The Second Cup

Health & Essentials: 407 Etr, Bell, Virgin Mobile, The Source, Chevron, Esso, Go Transit, Grocery Gateway, London Drugs, Longos, Marketplace Iga (Bc Only), Metro, Mcewan, Save-On-Foods, Pricesmart Foods, Urban Fare, Overwaitea Foods, Petro-Canada, Pioneer, Rexall, Rogers, Fido, Safeway, 7-Eleven, Shaw, Shell Canada, Sobeys, Price Chopper, Foodland, Iga, Commisso’s, Société Des Alcools Du Québec, Telus, Koodo Mobile, Ultramar, Whole Foods Market

As we can see, the list is quite extensive. I was going to give these two credit cards a big thumbs up and I was going to mention how they were hidden gems within the American Express products. But I guess they were so hidden that no one could find them.

It’s too bad that these two credit cards have discontinued. I am just glad that I got in before they were discontinued. Hopefully they will continue to honour me as a cardholder because the no annual fee ChoiceCard is a credit card that I plan on holding to for a while so long as they retain the three transfer partners.