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Leading up to the holidays every year, many restaurant chains launch promotions offering a bonus card when buying a gift card. Some of those can be stacked nicely with Amex Offers that appeared in the last week or two, while others can be stacked with Chase Offers.
The Deals
- Spend $50+ at P.F. Chang’s in a single transaction & get $10 back.
- Spend $50 at California Pizza Kitchen in a single transaction & get
- $15 back, or
- 1,500 Membership Rewards
Key Terms
- P.F. Chang’s
- Expires December 31, 2019.
- Offer valid in-restaurant and on food orders placed online.
- Excludes locations in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and airports.
- Not valid on physical and electronic gift cards purchased online or through Guest Services, gift card bulk orders, international transactions both in-restaurant and online, Pei Wei brand purchases, and delivery orders.
- California Pizza Kitchen
- Expires December 31, 2019.
- Spend $50+ in one transaction.
- Offer valid in-restaurant and on orders placed online but paid for in-restaurant at participating locations in the US.
- Excludes all orders paid for online or through the merchant’s app.
- Not valid at locations in airports, colleges and universities, hotels (including the Mirage Casino and the Grand Sierra Resort), the Staples Center, all locations in Guam, and at the CPK Food Truck/Mobile Kitchen.
- Excludes third party delivery orders, CPK Frozen, CPK products purchased at third party retailers, and online purchases of gift cards, e-gift cards, bulk gift cards, and gift card reloads.
Quick Thoughts
The P.F. Chang’s and California Pizza Kitchen Amex Offers can save you 20% and 30% respectively which is already a pretty good discount. The promo card offers can make those deals even better though.
With P.F. Chang’s, they’re offering $20 bonus cards for every $100 spent on their gift cards. If there are two of you in your household with this offer loaded to your cards, you can buy a $100 gift card in-restaurant and split the payment between the two cards. Your net cost would be $80 and you’d end up with a $100 gift card and a $20 bonus card.
The California Pizza Kitchen offer is even more rewarding and not just because the Amex Offer gives you up to 30% back. There are two versions of their promo card offer which differ depending on when you buy the gift cards in-restaurant. For every $100 of gift cards bought by November 20, you’ll get a $20 promo card plus a $10 card. From November 21 to December 31, you’ll only get $20 promo cards for every $100 of gift cards you buy.
One of the additional benefits of the CPK Amex Offer is that there are two versions of it – one with a statement credit and one offering Membership Rewards. You can load one version of each offer to two different cards, so it doesn’t matter if there’s no one else in your household with this offer available to maximize it. That means if you buy a $100 gift card by November 20, your net cost will be $85 and you’ll end up with a $100 gift card, a $20 bonus card, $10 bonus card and 1,500 Membership Rewards – a pretty decent return.
Something important to note is that the bonus cards aren’t regular gift cards as they can only be redeemed within certain dates. That means they can’t be resold, although the regular gift cards can be.
The P.F. Chang’s bonus cards can be redeemed from January 1 to February 29, so there’s a couple of months to use them in the new year. The CPK bonus cards are similar, but with different dates. The $20 bonus cards are redeemable from January 6 to February 23, so not quite two months. If you take advantage of this deal before November 20, the additional $10 bonus card expires on January 5.
Other Bonus Card Deals
There are at least two dozen restaurant chains offering these bonus card deals at the moment, including Chili’s, Ruby Tuesday, Applebee’s, Carrabba’s, Outback Steakhouse, Red Lobster, Boston Market, Red Robin and more. Some of these can be stacked with other Amex and Chase Offers for similar savings.
For example, there’s a Boston Market Amex Offer that’s offering $5 back when spending $25, while their promo card offer gives you a $5 bonus card when spending $25 on gift cards. There’s also a targeted Chili’s Chase Offer that’s giving 10% back on up to $50 of spend, while their promo card offer gives you $10 bonus cards for every $50 of gift cards you buy.
If you’re planning on buying a lot of gift cards for the same chain, check the terms of the promo card offer before you buy. Many chains limit you to using one bonus card per visit, so you can’t spend $50 and expect to use five $10 bonus cards all in one go.
In nearly every case, online purchases of restaurant gift cards won’t trigger their respective Amex or Chase Offers as the payments tend to be processed by CashStar, Cardways, etc. You’ll therefore have to buy physical gift cards in-restaurant in order to get the statement credits/bonus Membership Rewards.
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Thank you for pointing out a useful stacking opportunity, Stephen. It’s nice to see AMEX still has no issues with personal use deals.
I can imagine there’d be uproar among the general public if their Amex cards got closed down for buying a few gift cards, so I can’t imagine these kind of deals ever being an issue.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought eCards or physical cards were excluded from this AMEX offer?
eGift cards are excluded which is noted at the end of the post and in the Key Terms, as are physical cards purchased online. Physical gift cards purchased in-restaurant will trigger the offer though.
You could at least mention these are only useful if you’re buying these for personal use. The promo cards, well at least the one for P. F. Changs, has a date limitation and expires so it can’t be resold generally.
Any concern about AMEX clawbacks and shutdowns when buying gift cards?
Yes, I know, don’t thank me too much for ruining a fun post.
Above all ,though, I am truly grateful for the alerts you post.
I certainly don’t think there’s any danger with buying gift cards at this level.
I live at CPK yet I only got PF Changs, hoping CPK shows up soon for me.
Stephen, I used your referral link to sign up for a sofi account but my welcome bonus did not post. They told me that if I provided the name and email address of the person referring me that they would manually post the bonus. Would it be possible to get your email address?
Sure, I’ll send you a message privately – thanks for using my referral link 🙂
Would this stack with the $10 AMEX dine small credit?
That’s a very good point. Yes, if you had the P.F. Chang’s offer on your Amex Gold card, that would stack with the $10 credit – I’ll add that to the post.
Its not specific to the Gold card. I got the $10 small dining offer on my base Marriott card.
That’s a different offer. The Amex Gold has a $10 per month dining benefit that can be used at P.F. Chang’s, Shake Shack, Grubhub, The Cheesecake Factory, Boxed, Ruth’s Chris and maybe one or two other places.
The dining benefit applies doesn’t apply to P.F. Chang’s
You’re right – I don’t know why I thought it did when Evan mentioned it – I was getting myself confused. I just noticed that he referenced the Dine Small credit; if a local P.F. Chang’s is included on Amex’s list of participating restaurants, it should stack.