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Earlier this evening I wrote about how to get a free $25 gift card from American Express if you already own a prepaid card. Then, while I was out eating dinner, I received an email from my affiliate network suggesting I promote this offer:
Order an American Express Prepaid Card, Load $200 or More at the Time of Order, and Receive a Complimentary $25 Gift Card. Offer Expires 6/30/12. Terms and Conditions apply
Usually (i.e. every single other time) when I receive an email requesting that I promote something, the email goes right into the e-trash. In this case, though, it’s actually a helpful addition to my earlier post.
In the earlier post (“American Express loves to give us money”), I said that you get the $25 gift card by loading your existing prepaid card with at least $200. For existing cardholders, it appears that this deal will work with Vanilla Reloads (at least, there is no obvious restriction against it).
As the ad above shows, if you are new to Amex prepaid cards, you can still get the $25 gift card, but you have to load the $200 at the time you order your prepaid card. I believe that this means that you cannot use a Vanilla Reload card to load the $200. You probably need to authorize a transfer from a bank account instead. Still, it’s a decent deal.
If you click through the ad shown above, I’ll get a few bucks when you signup for the card. If you don’t like that idea, go directly to americanexpress.com/prepaid.
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Mine too!
Wouldn’t you know it, the bonus $25 gift card arrived yesterday.
Did anyone get their $25 bonus gift card yet? It’s been about 6 weeks already.
carwag25: No, you can’t load the temp card other than in-store at the time of purchase.
Anybody figure out if I can buy a temp card at OD, use it online via this offer and load with vanilla cards bought from OD?
Joe: some Amex promotions exclude prepaid cards, such as the ones involving twitter, Facebook, and four square. I don’t know if small biz Saturday will work. My guess is no, but we’ll see.
If I just get the PrePaid card but not any of their actual credit cards, am I able to sign up for any of the offers that you often promote here? (Things like transfer bonuses, checking in on facebook, Small Business Saturday, etc.)?
Does anybody know if 7-11 comes up on statements as a Grocery store?
If it does I can get 5 points per dollar on my freedom card and get a green dot money pak (I read somewhere that the first time your reload the Amex prepaid card with a green dot they add the fee for the green dot to your amex prepaid statement, can anyone verify?) to fill up my Amex prepaid card with. I know I know, FM is going to say to use my inkBold but I dont live near an office depot and If I can get the Green Dot for free I would rather do that than pay the $3.95 for a vanilla.
Moshe: I don’t know if it would show up as a grocery store. You might not be able to buy the green dot cards with a credit card.
Murali: my guess is that you can do both
Ted F: good points
THEsocalledfan: I know what you mean!
Qing: Yes, I believe you can get up to 3 Amex cards per person.
so for new card users, how many bonus can we get? Looks like 3 card limits are for existing card users.
Wasn’t going to get one for my wife, but I have no choice if it helps you make some money of this thing!
@snuggliestbear I believe last time AMEX pulled it was because it was supposedly a targeted promo with a generic promo code sent to people’s email. Well, word got out and angry people happened. I personally got the email so I went with it before seeing the SD thread. This time though, looks like its a public offer.
What’s not clear is if i can do both the deals. I do have a prepaid and i see this offer in my account. Is the new offer separate, i.e., can i order a new prepaid and do this?
Used link in thread.
Worst case scenario: They don’t honor the deal for one reason or another (although website does appear to be publicly available) and I’m out, well, nothing.
As in the thread the Ted F mentions, AMEX has done this recently and basically pulled the rug out from under you before giving the bonus. I was pretty pissed as I had already spent most of the gift card and had it for about a month before they basically said, “oops, we messed up. Sorry, no bonus!”.