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American Express has unveiled a number of terrific new “Offers for You,” also known as “Sync Offers”. Not all offers are available to every person or to every Amex card they have. To see your offers, log into your American Express account, scroll down, and click on the “Offers for You” tab. Between my wife and I, we have many active American Express cards including those where we are alternate users on each other’s accounts. Here are some of the deals I found on our cards:
- Lowe’s: Spend $50 or more, get $10 back (up to 20% savings)
- Zappos: Spend $150 or more, get $30 back (up to 20% savings)
- Crate & Barrel: Spend $50 or more, get $10 back (up to 20% savings)
- Hampton Hotels: Spend $150 or more, get $25 back (up to 16.7% savings)
- Petco: Spend $25 or more, get $5 back (up to 20% savings)
- Petsmart: Spend $25 or more, get $5 back (up to 20% savings)
- iTunes: Spend $5 or more, get $5 back (up to 100% savings)
I’ve detailed before how to maximize savings and points earned from offers like these. For review, please revisit the following posts:
- Maximizing Amex Sync offers. Part 1: sync multiple cards
- Maximizing Amex Sync offers. Part 2: extreme savings
- Maximizing Amex Sync offers. Part 3: shopping elsewhere
- Maximizing Amex Sync offers. Part 4: forget shopping, get points and cash for free
I haven’t yet had a chance to experiment with the current offers, but here is my initial research on each one:
Lowe’s
- Frequent Miler Laboratory: People have reported getting portal points or cash back both from buying physical gift cards at Lowes.com and from using gift cards.
- CashBackMonitor: Best portal rates include 5% cash back via Shop Discover and uPromise; 3X via Barclaycard RewardsBoost, Chase Ultimate Rewards Mall, and AA portal
- GiftCardGranny: Lowe’s gift cards have up to 81% resale value
One option: Buy physical gift cards online through portal $50 at a time. Either resell gift cards or use through portal to buy merchandise.
Best bet: Bring enrolled Amex cards to Lowes and use them to buy gift cards to other merchants in-store. Make sure to buy cards $50 at a time. Lowes carries a wide variety of gift cards, so this is a chance to get 20% back for buying gift cards to gas stations, Amazon.com, Southwest Airlines, and much more!
Zappos
- Frequent Miler Laboratory: No data
- CashBackMonitor: No data
- GiftCardGranny: Zappos gift cards have up to 80% resale value
Best bet: Buy gift cards online $150 at a time but only if sure to use the credit. Resale is break even at best so not worth the hassle. When buying and using gift cards, go through portal just in case (and report back whether or not it works!)
Crate & Barrel
- Frequent Miler Laboratory: People have reported getting portal points or cash back both from buying physical gift cards at Crateandbarrel.com and from using gift cards.
- CashBackMonitor: Best portal rates include 5% cash back via Shop Discover and uPromise; 4X via United portal; 3X via Barclaycard RewardsBoost, and AA portal
- GiftCardGranny: Crate & Barrel gift cards have up to 84% resale value
Best bet: Buy physical gift cards online through portal $50 at a time. Either resell gift cards or use through portal to buy merchandise.
Hampton Hotels
- Frequent Miler Laboratory: No relevant data
- CashBackMonitor: No relevant data
- GiftCardGranny: Hilton gift cards have up to 73% resale value.
Best bet: Use deal for actual planned Hampton Inn stay. Alternatively, try going to Hampton Inn, in person, to buy $150 Hilton gift card. I might try this just to see if it works.
Petco
- Frequent Miler Laboratory: People have reported getting portal points from using gift cards online, but there’s no data about buying gift cards.
- CashBackMonitor: Best portal rate is 10% cash back via Shop Discover
- GiftCardGranny: Petco gift cards have up to 65% resale value
Best bet: Buy physical gift cards online $25 at a time but only if planning to use those gift cards to buy merchandise. When shopping at Petco, go through Shop Discover portal.
Petsmart
- Frequent Miler Laboratory: People have reported getting portal points or cash back both from buying physical gift cards at Petsmart.com and from using gift cards.
- CashBackMonitor: Best portal rate is 10% cash back via Shop Discover
- GiftCardGranny: Petco gift cards have up to 79% resale value
Best bet: Buy physical gift cards online through Shop Discover portal $25 at a time. Either resell gift cards or use through portal to buy merchandise.
iTunes
This offer is for a 100% rebate so might as well use it! The only real question is whether it is worth the effort to change my credit card on file multiple times.
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[…] two that can be used to save money almost anywhere. For a few recent examples, please see “20% off Lowe’s, Zappos, Crate & Barrel, and more” and “Amex Sync Offer: $20 off $100 at […]
Did you ever try buying a gift card at a Hampton? I’d be interested to know if that works.
On the other hand, a person might be better off just buying Hilton gift cards at 73%. That seems like a heck of a deal.
No, I haven’t tried it yet. Where did you see gift cards at 73%?
Total mistake on my part. I read in your post that they were buying at 73% on giftcardgranny and mixed it up in my head as that they were selling at 73%.
[…] Many 20% off opportunities: 20% off Lowe’s, Zappos, Crate & Barrel, and more […]
It looks like you can only register the main card and not the authorized user card. Can you the either the main card or the authorized user card to get the $10 off Lowe’s one the one account?
No, you can register authorized user cards. The easiest way is to sync the card with your Twitter account and tweet the appropriate message to enroll (for example, tweet “#AmexLowes” to sign up for the Lowes offer). You can use this same procedure for Amex Serve cards too, or any other card that doesn’t show the offer in the “My Offers” section.
I added the iTunes offer to all the cards I could using multiple tabs. For some reason it doesn’t seem to be posting automatically. I did do the first one through a portal despite the T&C’s, but the second one I went straight through iTunes. BTW the lowest eGift you can get through iTunes is $10, so to trigger the deal you’ll be buying $10 for each Amex card, only half of which is free…
Hi,
Was the iTunes offer available on all your offers?
Or were you able to add it via twitter/facebook?
TIA for your inputs.
[…] 20% off Lowe’s, Zappos, Crate & Barrel, and more […]
On one of my American Express cards I was offered $5 off a $30 pay at the pump purchase from BP. Assuming you’re going to be buying gas anyway you are getting about 1.5 gallons for free. The best thing about these rewards in the past is that I have found that they credit quickly.
…oops. I can answer that one. NO – you can’t use a $200 Lowes card to buy $250 worth of gas cards. I, of course, meant a $200 gas card.
You are correct — you can’t use a Lowes GC to buy another GC in the store. Register won’t allow it.
So if I interpret the Laboratory results correctly – I can use my Freedom card at the UR portal to get 10X points buying,say,a $200.00 physical gift card from Lowes. But it looks like I would be unable to use that card in a physical Lowes location to buy $250 worth of Gas cards. Is that right?
Right. As Nick said, you can’t use a Lowes gift card to buy another gift card.
My Blue Amex Card shows the offers but the other 3 which were opened within the last 2 weeks show no offers? Is there a time frame before you start receiving the Sync offers. Just added my wife as an additional user and then she got an Amex Blue last week and I was added as an additional user, these are the ones that don’t show offers. All different user IDs.
I’ve noticed the same pattern: new cards don’t get the offers for about a month (my guess: after first statement close date). You can enroll with Twitter though: sync your card and tweet: #AmexLowes, for example.
FM – I haven’t had luck with the ShopDiscover portal when not paying with a Discover card. Can you confirm that this combination (ShopDiscover + Amex) has worked for you?
Yes, it has worked for me. If you haven’t had good luck with it, you might as well stay way.
iTunes – I switched my card on file 3 times, the third time I had to call in to Apple to complete the purchase (probably some security measure) but it took very little time – no questions asked.
Thanks for the update
The way I read the post, it sounds to me like I can over and over at Lowe’s and not limited to one transaction per Amex card. Correct?
No, most sync offers (including the Lowes one) are one time per card. That’s why it’s important to enroll all of your Amex cards (including Serve) in promotions like these
My Petsmart offer is online only, so less interesting to me as it adds another step to buying a bag of dog food.