How I’m rocking the soon-to-expire awesome Amex Offers

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Amex Offers have been wonderfully generous this holiday season.  Most offers are targeted: they’re available through some Amex cards, but not others.  However, if you have a lot of Amex cards (regular cards, authorized user cards, Serve cards, and Bluebird cards) it is likely that you have had a chance to enroll in many of these offers.

For background details on Amex Offers, please see: Complete Guide to Amex Offers.

Below are the awesome Amex Offers that I’m most excited about.  Here’s how I plan to tackle each one…

Sam’s Club: Spend $100+, Get 20% Back Up to $250 (Exp 1-31-17)

amexoffer-sams-club-spend-100-get-20pct-up-to-250-exp-1-31-17

This has to be one of the best Amex Offers I’ve ever seen.  I was able to load this offer onto 9 separate cards.  The offer states that all spend must be in a single transaction, but people have found that multiple transactions on the same day (and within a short amount of time, I suppose) also trigger the credit.  So, my approach has been to buy three $500 MasterCard gift cards with each Amex card.  I’ve had to pay at the customer service counter and each card is purchased separately, but it has worked to trigger the full $250 back.

I pay just under $5 per gift card in fees, so my total spend per Amex card is just shy of $1515, and I get $250 back.  That’s a profit of $235 per Amex card.  With 9 cards enrolled, my profit is approximately 9 x $235 = $2,115!!!!

Staples.com: Spend $100, Get $20 (Exp 12-31-16)

amexoffer-staples-spend-100-get-20-exp-12-31-16

I have 20 Amex cards enrolled in this online-only offer.  Luckily Staples.com offers a wide variety of gift cards.  I plan to split my purchases across the following:

  • $100 Visa for $106.95.  After $20 back, that’s a 13% discount on money that can be spent almost anywhere.  Pretty good.
  • $100 Target e-gift cards for $100 each.  20% off.
  • $100 Whole Foods e-gift cards for $100 each.  20% off.

If I flew Southwest often I’d definitely consider their gift cards.  And I would get Hyatt gift cards, if it wasn’t for this common occurrence: $1,000 Hyatt gift card hacked… Twice.

Office Depot / OfficeMax: Spend $100, Get $20 (Exp 12-31-16)

office-depot

I didn’t have this offer on any of my cards.

If I did have this offer, I would probably use each enrolled Amex card to buy a $200 Five Back Visa card or a Dining Everywhere Visa card in-store at Office Depot.

NewEgg: Spend $200, Get $25 (Exp 12-31-16)

amexoffer-newegg-spend-200-get-25-exp-12-31-16

I have 17 cards enrolled in this offer.

Normally I don’t get too excited by an Amex Offer that is less than 20% off, but Newegg.com has an attractive (to me) option: $200 Vanilla eGift for $209.95. newegg-virtual-visa

After the $25 rebate, the $200 eGift Visa will cost $184.95.  That’s only a 7.525% discount on money, but it represents a solid $15 profit per enrolled Amex card.  I’ll follow up later this week with details about how I hope to easily liquidate these.

BestBuy: Spend $250, Get $25 (Exp 12-31-16)

amexoffer-bestbuy-spend-250-get-25-exp-12-31-16-b

I have this offer on 9 of my Amex cards.

If they’re in-stock, I may use this in-store to buy multiple $200 Visa cards for $206.95 each, and split the transactions across Amex cards to try to get as close to $250 spend per card as possible.  Since this offer is, at best, a 10% rebate, this approach would net at most a 6.5% discount on money.

Honestly I’m not convinced it’s worth my time.  Unless a reader suggests a better approach I’ll probably sit out this deal.  If I actually wanted to buy something at Best Buy, though, it would be a different story.

Sears: Spend $50, Get $10 (Exp 12-31-16)

sears-amex-offers-spend-50-get-10

I have this offer on all 21 of my Amex cards.  My plan is to go through a cash back portal with each Amex card to reload existing Sears gift cards that I have, $50 at a time.  I will then do a combination of approaches:

Lowes: Spend $50, Get $10 (Exp 12-31-16)

lowes-amex-offer

I have all 21 of my Amex cards enrolled in this offer.  I used one to buy a $50 physical Lowes gift card online as an experiment for the Frequent Miler Laboratory.  Note that while my experiment appears to be successful (I got the $10 back from Amex and TopCashBack shows cash back pending), others have reported that portals have failed to pay out.

With the rest of my enrolled Amex cards, I’ll do the following:

  • Buy merchant gift cards as presents.  By paying $50 at a time at checkout, I’ll get 20% back for these purchases.
  • Buy multiple $200 Visa Gift Cards.  I’ll ask the cashier to split tender so that I’ll pay for these cards $50 at a time.  If I buy one $200 Visa gift card with four Amex cards, I’ll get $40 back!  That’s well worth up to $7 in fees.

See: Extreme Stacking the Lowe’s Amex Offer: 20% off Amazon, Delta, Disney, StubHub, and more.

lowes-visa-gift-cards

Harry & David: Send $75, Get $20 (Exp 12-31-16)

amexoffer-harryanddavid-spend-75-get-20-exp-12-31-16

I have 9 Amex cards enrolled in this offer.  The trick here is that the offer applies not only to Harry & David, but also to the entire line of 1-800-Flowers brands.  My plan is to go through the best available portal to 1-800-Flowers, 1-800-Baskets, Cheryl’s, etc (at the time of this writing BeFrugal is offering 20% cash back at 1-800-Baskets and Cheryls.com) and buy $75 physical gift cards.  As a proved in recent experiment, this will trigger the $20 back from the Amex Offer.  By combining the portal and the Amex Offer, I can buy 1-800-Flowers gift cards for 47% off.

Later, I’ll use those gift cards to buy presents at a huge discount, or to effectively buy miles cheaply.  More details can be found here:

Macy’s Spend $100, Get $15 (Exp 12-30-16)

macys-amex-offer

With so many opportunities to buy gift cards at 20% off, I may sit out this 15% deal.  On the other hand, I do shop at Macy’s occasionally, so 15% off gift cards may be worth doing.  I haven’t yet decided!

Courtyard by Marriott: Spend $100, Get 2,000 Membership Rewards points (Exp 12-31-16)

amexoffer-spend-100-get-2000-mr-points-exp-12-31-16

Sadly, I only have this offer on one of my Amex cards.  In the past, I’ve been able to go in person to a Courtyard by Marriott front desk and buy a Marriott gift card in order to trigger similar Amex Offers.  Now that Business Platinum cardholders can redeem points for 2 cents value each towards many flights, this rebate is effectively 40% towards flights!  I’ll definitely buy a $100 gift card if I remember to swing by my local Courtyard with my Amex card in-hand.

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