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A few days ago, AMEX launched an AMEX Offer that gives 5,000 MR points for purchasing an Amazon Prime Membership. The annual fee for a Prime membership is $99, so if you value MR points at around 1.8 cents per point like we do, this offer is effectively like getting about 10% off the Prime annual fee. If you can use it, it’s obviously a great deal.

Of course, this offer has an expiration date: it ends on January 31, 2018. After opening the Amazon website and going to Account & Lists - My Prime Membership, you can see your next Prime renewal date on the left side.
As shown above, if your renewal date is on or before next January 31, then there is no issue at all. However, based on our own testing, you can still use this offer even if your renewal date is after that. We can divide possible Prime account situations into the following categories.

You are a Prime Student member

Prime Student only costs $49 per year, so it does not meet the spending requirement of this AMEX Offer. However, Prime Student members can click Upgrade to Prime in the image above at any time to upgrade to a regular Prime membership. If you do this, the unused portion of your current membership will be refunded on a pro rata basis, and you will be charged the new $99 annual fee. In effect, you are paying an extra $50 to get 5,000 points, and regular Prime members can also share their benefits with another person for free, so this is still a very good deal.

You are a Prime member, and your next renewal date is before the end of next January

You only need to change the credit card used for renewal to the card that has this AMEX Offer added. Nothing else is required.

You are a Prime member, and your next renewal date is after the end of next January

You can contact Amazon customer service online and ask them to cancel your current Prime membership and give you a pro rata refund. After that, you can simply purchase a new membership yourself using your AMEX card.

You are not a Prime member

If you shop on Amazon, we recommend taking this opportunity to sign up, since it will probably be hard to see a discount this good again. Also, unfortunately, buying an Amazon Prime Gift for yourself or someone else will not trigger this offer, so there is no need to keep trying.