American Express Blue Cash Preferred Review

American Express Blue Cash Preferred

Reviewed by Credit Carrots (2020)

Amex Blue Cash Preferred Review

TL;DR: The AMEX Blue Cash Preferred is one of the best cash back cards you’re going to find. It has a whopping 6% cash back rate for supermarkets and streaming services, 3% for gas and transit, and 1% for all other purchases. To top it all off it also brings a strong suite of benefits such as return protection and car rental insurance. We highly recommend this card as your everyday go-to.

AMEX Blue Cash Preferred

Get up to 6% cash back when you use this card.

Annual Fee

The AMEX Blue Cash Preferred has an annual fee of $95.

Cash Back Categories

  • 6% at supermarkets and streaming
  • 3% at gas stations and transit
  • 1% on everyday spend

Top Additional Perks

  • Return Protection
  • Car Rental Insurance

Introduction

What the American Express Blue Cash Preferred is all about

This is one of the best cash back cards available in the United States. It has a maximum category cash back rate of 6%, and a cash back rate of 1% for purchases not in any of it’s bonus categories.

Furthermore, this AMEX also offers a strong suite of benefits such as purchase protection and car rental insurance!

A key differentiator for American Express is their customer experience. Very few companies in the world treat their clients as well as American Express does. You might think that you need an AMEX Platinum in order to receive good customer service, but we can confirm from having had both cards that AMEX treats ALL of their customers well.

The annual fee of $95 is more than covered if you just put half of your grocery spend on this card.

Read on to learn more about the robust benefits and perks that come with the American Express Blue Cash Preferred Credit Card.

How to Earn Cash Back

American Express Blue Cash Preferred Earn Rates

The beauty of a cash back credit card is that you get cold hard statement credits rather than the sometimes confusing reward point system.

The American Express Blue Cash Preferred offers the following:

6% cash back at supermarkets. An average two person household will spend about $7,000 a year on groceries and this card will get you 6% cash back on your first $6,000 (that’s $360 cash back!) then drop to 1% cash back afterwards.

One more thing to keep in mind is that the average “supermarket” sells a lot of gift cards from restaurants and other retailers such as Amazon and Apple! This is a great hack to maximize the 6% cash back.

6% cash back on streaming services. With this card you will get 6% cash back on streaming services such as Netflix.

3% cash back at gas stations. Note that this 3% cash back only applies to gasoline purchased at gas stations.

3% cash back on transit. Now here is a broad category. You will get 3% cash back on trains, taxicabs, ride share services, ferries, tolls, parking, buses, and subways. Note that airfare, car rental and cruises are not considered transit.

1% cash back on all other purchases. 1% cash back is pretty mediocre so we would suggest using another cash back credit card for purchases that don’t fall within the supermarket or gas station category.

Additional Benefits and Features

What else does the AMEX Blue Cash Preferred get you?

In addition to cash back, the AMEX Blue Cash Preferred offers some solid benefits that are in line other credit cards with a similar fee.

Our favorite benefits include:

  • Return Protection. If you want to return an item purchased with your card but the merchant won’t take it back, then AMEX will! This protection is valid for 90 days from time of purchase, has a cap of $300 per item and $1000 per year.
  • Car Rental Insurance. When you charge the full cost of the car rental to your AMEX, you will be covered for loss and damages to the vehicle for up to 30 days. One important thing to note is that the insurance does not cover “3rd party liability” (eg. if you run over a street sign owned by the city this insurance will not pay for a new street sign) – which is very typical of all credit card insurance coverage.

For a full list of the AMEX Blue Cash Preferred benefits click here.