American Express Plenti Launches, Lets You Earn Rebates at Many of the Places You Shop Anyway

by Gary Leff

The new American Express free to join coalition loyalty program Plenti has officially launched and is taking signups.

I broke details on it back in mid-March.

I’m looking forward to earning points (worth a penny apiece) for activities across retailers I undertake already — like earning off of my monthly AT&T bill and for buying gas.

Initial direct earning partners:

Examples

  • AT&T: 1 point for dollar on monthly wireless bill (requires paperless billing) and 1 point per dollar on devices, accessories, and other products at AT&T-owned store locations.
  • Exxon: 1 point per gallon of gas and 2 points per dollar on non-fuel purchases.
  • Mobil: 1 point per gallon of gas and 2 points per dollar on non-fuel purchases.
  • Rite Aid: There will be rotating product offers.
  • Enterprise, Alamo and National: 1 point per dollar on car rental base rates.

In addition to these earning partners (several of which have special earning offers), you can link your existing supermarket loyalty card from Bashas, Food Lion, Harris-Teeter, Hy-Vee, ShopRite, Stater Bros, and Wegmans to earn with Plenti.

The Plenti card actually looks, to me, like a grocery store loyalty card.

There’s also an online shopping portal effectively like any other cash back site. Initial earn rates look fine but not overly lucrative.

Finally, there is a Plenti credit card that has no annual fee and offers an effective 1% rebate and $25 signup bonus in the form of Plenti points. There’s no universe in which I’d sign up for this card in its current form.

Plenti is both a loyalty play with American Express as backend provider and a mass data play where they learn a tremendous amount about consumer behavior and make ‘the right offer’ to ‘the right consumer’ at ‘the right time’ using historical purchase activities and behavioral modeling.

Here’s Plenti’s cute introductory video:

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Pingbacks

Comments

  1. can’t see the upside compared with other products, eg Amex Everyday Preferred 4.5 points for supermarkets, 3 for gas, Ink 5 points for Telcos, Mobile providers, why use this product for 1 point for AT&T or 1 or 2 points at gas stations?

  2. The only thing that seems cool about Plenti is what you said about AMEX using big data to target marketing.

  3. Tim, I might be mistaken but I think Plenti is a loyalty program whereby you link your credit card to it and/or the vendor.
    Then, again I believe, Plenti will “see” the spend(or whichever card YOU Choose) at the particular partner(ATT, etc..) and then gives Plenti points for discounts/rebates.
    Or I could be totally wrong:)

  4. Anyone know how this works at Rite-Aid? Can you earn Plenti points and Wellness+ points? I do a lot of shopping at Rite-Aid and after spending $500 and $1000 a year you get 10% and 20%, respectively, off everything in the store (minus prescriptions and gift cards) for the rest of the current year and all of the following year. You’d have to be nuts to forego Wellness+ points if you can’t get both and do a lot of shopping at Rite-Aid.

  5. Nevermind, I should have gone to the Rite-Aid website and looked before I asked. You get both Wellness+ and Plenti points.

  6. If Kmart Shop Your Way Rewards is indicate, it’s a no go for now. Rite-Aid B&M aren’t close and none of the local grocery chains has a loyalty program.

  7. after i had posted, i though i may have misinterpreted it, ie that it was a double dip, as you suggest it may be, Mike’s Rite-Aid explanation bodes well for the double dip theory.

Comments are closed.