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)
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)
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)
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)
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. 
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)
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)
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:
- Buy Sears / Kmart / Lands End stuff at well over 30% off. See: Extreme Stacking the Sears Amex Offer, and:
- Use physical Sears gift cards (that I reloaded online) to try to buy gift cards I want (Amazon and Uber). See: The Sears Amex Offer risky option: up to 30% off Amazon, Uber, Gas, and more.
Lowes: Spend $50, Get $10 (Exp 12-31-16)
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.
Harry & David: Send $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:
- 47% off online gifts (or better) with free shipping
- 1800Flowers Extreme Stacking promo codes, portals, gift cards, and more
Macy’s Spend $100, Get $15 (Exp 12-30-16)
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)
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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[…] How I’m rocking the soon-to-expire awesome Amex Offers – How to best take advantage of the numerous Amex Offers that expire at the end of the month. […]
[…] great Amex Offers expire at the end of the year. I detailed my plans here: How I’m rocking the soon-to-expire awesome Amex Offers. Of course plans don’t always get executed as intended. Here’s my status for each […]
Never saw that post about what you’re doing with the Newegg evgc’s. Curious what you’re using them for.
I’ll do a mix of Kiva loans and Kickfurther investments: https://frequentmiler.com/2016/12/13/how-to-liquidate-small-denomination-debit-gift-cards/
Greg,
I saw you were laying off the Macy’s because 15% wasn’t worth it – I noticed Ebates has 6% Cash Back (In-Store) on Macy’s. Couldn’t these be stacked to make it 21%?
I guess the secondary question here is whether registering for In-Store Cash Back through Ebates would somehow throw off the Amex Offer.
Just an idea…
That’s a great idea. I think it would work and I would probably do that if it wasn’t so close to the end of the year. With the holidays I don’t think I’ll have time (or desire) to spend in Macy’s with a bunch of Amex cards.
[…] How I’m rocking the soon-to-expire awesome Amex Offers – How to best take advantage of the numerous Amex Offers that expire at the end of the month. […]
I want to buy something for $500 on Ebay; what’s the best way to maximize if I have a bunch of the Sears deals? Also I have some Newegg deals, but obviously not as lucrative as the Sears offer. I have the 8% bucks offer that expires Dec 15th evening, so I’d prefer to go there. Or I can also buy it at AZ or Newegg for the same price but without the 8% Bucks offer. What would you suggest?
Sorry I don’t have a suggestion that can be done by tonight.
No problem, I’m going to hold off for a few weeks anyways.
I don’t think that Sears sells eBay gift cards so this would be tricky, but you could try the following:
1. Reload Sears physical gift card $50 at a time online (in order to max out Amex Offer)
2. In-store at Sears, try to buy $200 Visa or MC gift cards with your Sears gift card. The register will allow it, but most cashiers won’t
3. Use the Visa/MC gcs to buy what you want on eBay, or look for good deal on eBay gift cards and use Visa/MC gcs to buy into deal
Personally I wouldn’t risk it
That’s the best I could come up with too. Unfortunately most stores by me have closed and those still open don’t allow GC to purchase a visa/MC GC anymore. No big deal, I’ll just skip it this time.
Does $200 Vanilla VISA eGift at Newegg.com have PIN?
What bank is the issuer of the Vanilla VISA eGift card?
I am just wondering if it is good for money order.
I don’t know how it can be used to buy a money order since there’s no actual card
Just a word of caution about reloading Sears gift cards. I tried loading a couple of cards $50 multiple times this weekend and when I got to $150 on one card and $200 on another card, my orders went through — but I never got the money loaded to the card! My credit cards were billed the $50.
I called Sears and they’re investigating. I suspect I’ll eventually get my money, but this is way more hassle than I want. I’d recommend loading $50 or maybe $100 and spending it in store before loading more. Having multiple Sears GCs to load is probably even a better idea.
Thanks for the caution. I’ve never had that happen, but Sears’ technology is definitely not too reliable.
FM,
Have you actually purchased merchant gc at Sears with Sears gc? How about Kmart? In the past when I paid with a Sears gc at Kmart I always needed to hand my card to the cashier as it didn’t work correctly at my end. That was for buying regular merchandise. I never attempted to purchase a gc with a gc.
Yes, but it has been a while. I’ll try again soon. In my previous experience, if I bought stuff worth less than $100 I could pay with a physical Sears gift card without handing it to the cashier. $100 and up requires them to enter in a number from the card.
Are you worried about the RAT (Rewards Abuse Team) at all?
I don’t think it is likely that they’ll police Amex Offers
and of course i get almost none of these offers on my cards. I even received the promo email with the 20% off sam’s club, click through to find nothing on my account, and then find the html of the email has changed the next day.
how many people are actually getting these?
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What do you do with all those visa gift cards you bought?
same question.
You won’t get all of your answers by reading one post. If you don’t know what to do with them, don’t buy them.
Tomorrow’s post will list some of the things I do with them
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