10,000 MR points/King Miles for referring Amex applications in India

I received an email from American Express while I was travelling a couple of weeks back. This was a promo which they had designed for existing card holders to refer their friends and contacts to American Express for the American Express Kingfisher First Credit Card and the American Express Platinum Reserve Credit Card.

So, the offer, which seems to be a targetted one, is from a unique tie-up between Amex and LinkedIn in India. I haven’t been at the receiving end of such a marketing offer earlier, and I hold credit cards from most prominent CC issuers in India. The details of the offer are as follows:

The applicant of the card gets a 30% discount on the annual fee for the Amex KFA Credit Card which usually has a INR 5,000 (~USD 110).
The applicant for the Amex Platinum Reserve CC gets a 20% off on the Lifetime foundation fee of INR 50,000 (USD 1100). In case the applicant wants to go with an annual fee option, it is priced at INR 10,000 (~USD 220) and again gets a 20% off on the fee.
The holder of the existing American Express card gets 10,000 MR Points or Kingfisher King Miles for the reference. Alongside, various freebies are on offer such as travel vouchers, premium LinkedIn accounts, business card holders etc.

Overall, a win-win proposition for the applicant and the referrer. The applicant gets an Amex at a discount, and the referrer gets 10K KingMiles or 10K Amex MR Points in India. This offer is limited to 10 references per participating member. So, overall, 100K KingMiles or MR Points can be made with this offer. Considering Kingfisher Airlines is going to be soon inducted into the oneworld alliance, it makes sense to accumulate the miles rather than MR points, because the MR points convert at 1.25 points per KingMile. A 100,000 King Miles are good for a Roundtrip in Kingfisher First to London from India. And there will be an alliance redemption chart out shortly too!

The important T&C include the validity date of the proposition, which is till 30th Sep 2011. Also, any kind of points/miles to the referrer will be only given after an application is approved and the membership fee is collected.