Amex Sync: 20% off beyond Home Depot

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American Express is currently running a Sync Offer which gives cardholders a one time $15 rebate on a $75 or larger purchase at Home Depot (see this Quick Deal for more info).  You must first enroll your Amex card(s) to qualify.  One way to get a lot out of promotions like these is to enroll multiple Amex cards (see “Maximizing Amex Sync offers. Part 1: sync multiple cards”).  You can enroll primary Amex cards, authorized user cards, Amex Serve prepaid cards, and even Amex Serve subaccounts. 

To save 20% on all of your Home Depot purchases, enroll a bunch of Amex cards in this promotion and then head over to Home Depot to buy Home Depot gift cards.  Ask to pay $75 at a time, and each time swipe a different enrolled Amex card.  Each of your card accounts should then receive $15 back automatically from American Express.  Once you have the Home Depot gift cards in hand, you can save even more by using coupons and/or by shopping online through a portal.

If you don’t have any purchases to make at Home Depot, you can still do well by going to Home Depot and buying gift cards to other merchants.  A helpful reader sent me photos of his local Home Depot gift card rack, and I took some of my own, then I used those photos to create the table below.  The table shows all of the gift cards (that I could make out in the photos) available at Home Depot. 

Yes, Home Depot has some attractive money-like products such as REloadit cards, but they do not accept credit cards for those purchases.  I tried all of the variable load options, but all were coded in the register as cash-only.  Fixed value Visa, MasterCard, and Amex cards are fair game though.  The table below includes a column showing whether or not I think that Home Depot accepts credit cards for each gift card.  I haven’t tried all possible combinations so at this point this is just my best guess.  Please let me know if I got any of the details wrong.

 

Gift Cards by Type Pay w/ Credit Card?
Entertainment and books  
AMC Theatres Y
Fandango  Y
iTunes Y
Ultimate Game Card Y
Amex/MasterCard/Visa/Reloads  
American Express gift card ($25, $100) Y
MasterCard ($25, $50, $100) Y
MasterCard $120 4 pack  Y
GreenDot Cash Reload N
GreenDot Prepaid MasterCard N
GreenDot Prepaid Visa N
PayPal reloadable MasterCard N
PayPower Visa Prepaid Card N
REloadit card N
Visa  ($25, $50, $100) Y
Visa $75 3 pack Y
Phone  
AT&T Go Y
Net10 Y
payLo Y
T-Mobile Y
Tracfone Y
Virgin Mobile Y
Restaurant  
Applebees  Y
Buffalo Wild Wings  Y
Burger King Y
Cheesecake Factory Y
Chili’s  Y
Cold Stone Creamery  Y
Cracker Barrel  Y
IHop  Y
Little Ceasars Y
Longhorn Steakhouse Y
Macaroni Grill  Y
Maggiano’s  Y
Noah’s Y
Olive Garden Y
On the Border  Y
Outback Steakhouse  Y
Panda Express  Y
Panera Y
PF Changs  Y
Red Lobster Y
Red Robin  Y
Ruby Tuesday  Y
Starbucks  Y
Steak N Shake  Y
Subway  Y
TGI Fridays  Y
Store / Gas  
BP Y
Shell Y
The Home Depot  Y

 

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[…] excluded online but can be purchased in store. Home Depot sells a bunch of third party gift cards, you can see a list of what cards Home Depot has had in the past here. Best cards for resell will be the gas ones (BP & Shell). Shell can be resold for 91% of face […]

JR

Any advice for those of us too far from a Home Depot before the deal expires on the 15th? Any suggestions for extracting an HD gift card since online gift card purchases are not eligible? Is this enforced?

I have 2 Amex with the deal loaded but out of country. And I can’t think of anything I need at HD right now. But I know I will the minute this expires.

Mark

Probably a newbie question, but… Would HD allow the following?

1. Buy HD cards in store, get credit.
2. Buy 3rd party GC’s with your HD cards, either in store or online?

John

@FM,

Thanks for this, but there is one gc that you forgot to include in the gas category, which is ARCO gc, is it eligible for the offer too? I am in my local HD now and see a lot of ARCO gas gift card in the gc rack.

John

Thanks! that’s relieving to hear!

[…] value. Rather than simply copying and pasting somebody else’s list, go check out this post by Frequent Miler (which while a little old should still be fairly up to date). If you see any gift cards not listed […]

[…] In the past it was possible to purchase 3rd party gift cards in store, but they’ve now been excluded in the fine print. The big question is whether this is actually enforced or not. This Frequent Miler post shows what 3rd party gift cards Home Depot stocks and whether a credit card can … […]

Kevin

SYNC deals are great but I never remember which ones are active at any given moment. The main AMEX app doesn’t seem to list them (as far as I can tell).

Has anyone seen a different app that keeps all your SYNC deals listed on the phone?

SamOH

I have bought 3x$100 VGC using 4 AMEX cards,3x$75 and the rest on the fourth one…..did that 3 times already with one more round to go, maybe more ….net profit of $42 per 4 AMEX cards…love the SYNC deals!

James

Got shut down at HD in TN yesterday. LP manager would not let me swipe multiple cards or pay in increments of $75 on the $100 fixed value Visa cards.

Has anyone confirmed that the register will allow purchase of fixed value Visa cards with HD gift cards? I’ll try it this weekend and report back.

Ken

So if you buy one of the $100 cards with the $5 activation fee it’s essentially a $100MM? I’m not certain the activation fee for the $100 fixed GCs is $5.

Brad

The activation fee for $100 Visa GC is $5.95

houstonmama

I have the offer on my SPG cards but not on my Business green cards. Does anybody have it on their amex green?

houstonmama

Thank you!!!

Ken

What does this mean? How do you sync your card to Twitter, and what does it mean to tweet #AmexHomeDepot? Twitter is so damn confusing!

User Name

@Alan. Per card. And you’re wrong about Small Business Saturday.

Alan

Does it work for both the primary AND the authorized user or is it one rebate per account? I know for Small Business Saturday, the rebate was one per account (not per card).

steve

per unique card number.

Ben

The &25 x 3 are $8.95 each.
Self check out is your friend when it comes to ringing up three separate transactions 😉

Jason

Hua, I tried that at several Lowe’s and Home Depots and never been allowed. I heard a manager might be able to override the system but I was unable to find any willing.

Ranjit, I believe they were $8.95