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This morning I detailed how to maximize savings and rewards with eBates’ Birthday Week 15% cash back. See: eBates 15% Cash Back Extreme Stacking game plan.
In that post, I mentioned the possibility of stacking portal rewards with Amex Offers. So, today I combed through my Amex Offers to see which ones were also available on eBates this week for 15% cash back.
Amex Offers + 15% cash back via eBates
Here are the options I found that were available via my Amex Offers and via eBates for 15% cash back. For each merchant, the Amex Offer is described:
- 1800Flowers: Spend $50, Get $15
- 7 For All Mankind: Spend $250, Get $75
- Ashford: Spend $250, Get $50
- Birthday In a Box: Spend $50, Get $10
- eBags: Spend $75, Get $15
- Eve’s Addiction: Spend $100, Get $20
- Ghirardelli: Spend $50, Get $10
- Orvis: Spend $50, Get $10
- Puritan’s Pride: Spend $30, Get $10
- Rag & Bone: Spend $350, Get $75
- Samsonite: Spend $150, Get $30
11 opportunities is pretty good, right? Not so fast…
Is 15% Cash Back a good deal?
Also in this morning’s post, I suggested checking Cash Back Monitor to see if 15% was actually a good deal. Using CashBackMonitor, I looked at the best available portal rate for each store. Here are the stores in which eBates is not the best current portal:
- 1800Flowers. Best alternative rate: 20%
- Ashford. Best alternative rate: 17%
- Birthday In a Box. Best alternative rate: 23%
- eBags. Best alternative rate: 20%
- Eve’s Addiction. Best alternative rate: 25%
Next, I looked at historic best rates to see if 15% or better is common. For these stores, 15% cash back is fine, but it is not remarkable:
- Ghirardelli. Best alternative rate: 13% (historic best 15%)
- Orvis. Best alternative rate: 8% (often available for 16% cash back)
- Puritan’s Pride. Best alternative rate: 13% (often available for 15% or more)
That leaves us with only three stores which are available through Amex Offers and where 15% is a particularly good portal rate:
- 7 For All Mankind. Best alternative rate: 7% (historic best 10%)
- Rag & Bone. Best alternative rate: 6% (historic best 10%)
- Samsonite. Best alternative rate: 5% (historic best 10%)
Unfortunately, the combo of Amex Offers plus eBates 15% doesn’t yield as many great double-dips as I had hoped.
| Name / Link | Offer | Frequent Miler Notes: |
|---|---|---|
| Rakuten | You'll earn $10 after making a qualified purchase through the portal. We'll earn a bonus too (details vary depending upon promotions). | This is one of our two favorite portals (the other being TopCashBack). We love the Rakuten portal because it gives you the option of earning valuable Amex Membership Rewards points instead of cash back! |
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FM, with so many cheap airfares to Europe and Asia that are now being offered by the 3 major US airlines, do you think you can do a mileage run article (maybe a mock scenario) on how to maximize these airfares to meet elite status requirements and stacking with any mile promos that are available? I realize I can go to FT and just piece all the parts together but…this mileage running/elite status thing is beyond my paygrade 😉 Thanks!
Hmm, I’ll think about it. Most likely I would focus on a specific airline, like AA, if I did so
hi, I have another question, but I do not know how to fix the problem.
I just received my SSN yesterday. Today I apply an american express credit card, the system shows the process is pending. So I call american express customer services. The representative tell me when he enter my address, birthday date and zip code, there is another SSN under my name. So he suggests that I have to fix the problem first.
So I call Social security administration, but they tell me that I only have one SSN under my name. so what should I do? I do not know how to fix the problem. Can you help me? Thank you!
I have no specific expertise in this area, but as a first move, I would call AMEX back and talk to another person. If you are lucky, the first associate made an error and it won’t be a problem this time. If not, ask him to compare your “real” SSN to the one he has. That might point out a typographical error along the way, so you would at least know the root of the problem. Good luck!
I need dog food and will be using the AMEX Petco.com $25 rebate for $75 purchase deal, plus 15% ebates. Don’t usually see 15% for Petco. $36.25 off $75, or 48% off. Probably will do this with several cards–won’t Fido be happy (and fat)!
I tried to trigger the Amex offer from Petco.com the other day by ordering a physical gift card. It showed petco.com in the address bar the whole time, but the charge ended up being from Unleashed, which is explicitly excluded 🙁
So I would be careful if you try to GC approach to try to stock up that way. I assume there are some cards that will work and some that wont. I know this happened to me once buying GC from Sears where it ended up getting processed on my card as KMart. So sometimes the card is processed by one or the other.
Check your account again. The same thing happened to me, but now there is a credit on there. It seems like all petco.com charges are coming up as “unleashpetco…”, because I bought some actual pet food yesterday and it came up the same, but this time I actually got the credit. So, what I think happened is that amex realized that all of the charges are coming up as unleashed and has changed the coding to now automatically give the credit for them, and that the old ones were given the credit retroactively.
Hello again. I was ordering product, but given what Jamie wrote, if anyone gets the $25 AMEX credit for a gift card, please let us know it worked (and if you ordered a physical or electronic GC). I would prefer not to buy loads of food, but will consider it if it is the only option. Thanks.
@Jan
I can confirm getting the $25 Amex credit after I bought a $75 physical PETCO giftcard. Credit appeared about 5 days after I made the transaction.
It went pending as “unleashed,” and still posted as “unleashed,” but I received the credit anyway.