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The ability to 15 points per dollar on up to $25K in purchases at qualifying small businesses and restaurants has made it a lot of fun for me to break out my new Platinum card over the past month. Since being approved for the Amex Platinum card in November (through the Resy link found on our Best Offers page), I have been earning that multiplier with qualifying purchases (side note: I also referred someone from my new Platinum card before 12/1/21, so I am additionally earning 4 more points per dollar on all spend up to $25K over the next 3 months for a total of 19 points per dollar in those categories. That referral offer has since expired.). While I expect to earn the lion’s share of the points from the 15x portion of the offer when I buy a car (possibly in the next few days), I have used my card when appropriate over the past month mostly out of curiosity about which purchases would trigger the small business bonus points. I didn’t uncover any manufactured spending gems, but nonetheless I thought it might be worth sharing the wide range ways I have earned 15 points per dollar spent in the first month — and sharing which of these businesses were actually found on the only semi-useful Shop Small map.
Getting my car detailed
On the Shop Small Map? Nope
Regular readers know that I will hope to trigger most of the shop small bonus points with a car purchase because many dealerships are locally owned and show up on the Amex Shop Small map with the qualifying Shop Small designation (and some readers have confirmed earning 15x total on dealership purchases). Again, note that there are many businesses that qualify as small businesses that are not found on the map. That map is just a starting point search tool.
Since I want to put my new car purchase on my Platinum card in order to maximize points, I will not trade my current vehicle in to the dealership. I’ll need to sell it separately.
I therefore wanted to get my car detailed to get pictures in case I list it for sale privately after buying my new vehicle. The car cleaned up pretty well.
Meanwhile, I cleaned up on points, earning the 15x Shop Small bonus despite the fact that the detail shop wasn’t anywhere to be found on the Shop Small map.
Went to Ripley’s Aquarium
On the Shop Small map? Yes
Would you expect Ripley’s to be considered a small business? Believe it or not, the Ripley’s Aquarium in Myrtle Beach is on the Shop Small map, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that I got 15x here (both on tickets and in the gift shop). Still, using the Platinum card here wasn’t intentional: I just had my hands full with the kids and it was the card on top. Sometimes you get lucky!
Go Karting at The Track
On the Shop Small map? No
While visiting family in Myrtle Beach this past month, we mostly just stayed at home with the kids. However, one weekday afternoon we decided to see whether or not one of the go karting tracks was busy. It was a good decision; we were literally the only people riding Go Karts at The Track at Myrtle Beach for the hour or two that we were there. My soon-to-be-four-year-old loved racing side-by-side in a car with me while one family member at a time tried to chase us down (and the adults had a lot of fun leapfrogging around the multi-story track to his laughs and screams). Getting 15x was just the icing on the cake.
The Track also has a location in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee and we had visited that location when we rented our Vacasa vacation rental earlier this year. In both cases, I bought “tickets” on The Track’s website suing a Myrtle Beach coupon code (MBCHEAP10 this time) to save $10 off of $50. Sure enough, buying tickets on the website coded as a small business.
Hired a photographer for family photos
On the Shop Small map? Yes
We celebrated Christmas with half the family in Myrtle Beach a few weeks ago. As a Christmas gift, my wife and I hired a photographer for an hour to do a family photo shoot (with more family members not pictured here).
I was not at all surprised when the photographer showed up on the Shop Small map. That wasn’t a primary consideration here, we just shopped around for a combination of decent reviews and decent price and I fully expected we would likely get 15x on the purchase with any local photographer. I was a little disappointed that they wouldn’t let me prepay the whole thing on my card; I could only put part on the card and paid the balance in cash to the photographer (I assume it was the photographer’s cut). Taking cash out of the ATM to pay for a small business purchase hurt a little bit!
Bought a phone from Swappa to trade in
On the Shop Small map? No idea
Last month, I wrote about how T-Mobile was offering increased trade-in value toward many phones for those on the Magenta Max plan. One deal that stood out to me was the ability to essentially trade a Samsung Galaxy S9 for a Pixel 6 Pro that would be “free” after $900 in bill credits over two years (note that this specific deal has since expired).
Since our current phones are worth more than the selling price of a used Galaxy S9, I decided to buy a cheap Samsung Galaxy S9 (less than $150) on used phone site Swappa.com to trade in for a Pixel 6 Pro.
Swappa is an online marketplace where anyone can sell their used phones, but of course many small businesses list phones on the site (I imagine that some of them buy bulk lots of trade-in phones and recondition them for resale). I figured that the charge would come from Swappa.com and I didn’t know whether or not it would code as a small business. Somewhat surprising to me, the credit card charge showed up with the phone seller’s name (in this case a small business with a name that was something like “We Buy Used Phones LLC”) and earned the 15x small business bonus! That made what was already a good deal for me a little bit better.
Bought myself something
On the shop small map? I don’t think so
Several years ago, I backed startup BauBax on Kickstarter as they launched a much-anticipated line of travel jackets. Similar to Scottevest, BauBax had planned to make a line of sweatshirts, jackets, and blazers with a million hidden pockets. They eventually delivered and my wife and I had each gotten a sweatshirt and a jacket.
Unfortunately, I left my sweatshirt in a hotel several years ago. I knew right where I left it, but housekeeping never found it and since it wasn’t cheap I didn’t replace it. That is until now. I decided to get rid of some old stuff and I needed another hoodie. My wife got me a Scottevest sweatshirt (hoodie) for Christmas last year and I wear it often. I wanted a second similar one and decided to splurge on one from BauBax to rotate with my Scottevest hoodie.
I don’t think BauBax is on the Shop Small map (the package shipped from California and I used that as the location and didn’t find BauBax on the map), but I’m not surprised that they coded as a small business since my impression is that it is a quite small company.
Bought a couple of Christmas gifts
To avoid ruining any surprises, I won’t get into specifics here, but I’ll say that I bought a few Christmas gifts that coded as Shop Small or restaurants. In one case, I bought a restaurant gift certificate to a friend’s favorite restaurant. While I would have obviously expected a purchase made inside the small local restaurant to code at 15x whether as a restaurant or as a small business, I was pleasantly surprised that buying a mailed physical gift card from the restaurant’s website still worked for 15x.
Stuff that didn’t work that I thought might
In a couple of cases, I made purchases that I thought would code as small businesses but didn’t. This wasn’t based on the Shop Small map but rather guesses (as you can see above, many businesses that qualify for the Shop Small promotion aren’t necessarily on the map).
One that really surprised me was Last Bottle Wines. We wrote about a recent Last Bottle wine marathon. I made a few purchases from that sale and I was surprised to only earn 1x on the Platinum card. I thought for sure Last Bottle would code as a small business, but it didn’t.
I had also suspected that my local grocery store might code as a small business. That’s because I know it is a locally-owned franchise location. When charges from the store post on my credit card statement, the pending charge always shows the old name of the store (from before it changed brands many years ago). I have assumed that was because the local LLC that really owns the store was based on the previous brand name — though when the charges finalize they do show the current chain name as the merchant name. I thought that perhaps it would code as a small business, but it didn’t. Not the end of the world here as I intend to buy a car relatively soon and trigger the rest of the small business points, but it surprised me nonetheless.
Bottom line
Since the Resy offer debuted for the Platinum card, I have been saying that small businesses are everywhere. The purchases covered in this post cumulatively add up to more than $1,000 of spend. While that doesn’t put a dent in the $25,000 cap on the small business capacity at 15x, it was effortless spend that I would have done whether or not it coded properly for bonus points. Getting 15,000+ points (really 19,000+ thanks to the referral offer as well) for these purchases is a fantastic value. Finding and buying a vehicle to earn a total of 19x on a very large purchase has involved far more effort, though we’re getting pretty close on that front and I hope to have news about how I’ve earned the rest of the small business and referral bonus points soon.
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Has anyone happened to make a purchase at a store outside the US marked as “shop small” eligible and gotten the 15x points? I understand it clearly states US stores but I’m wondering if there’s some chance that wouldn’t be coded properly. I too am looking to purchase a car with this AMEX, but its not in the US.
any non chain store (or franchise) that has NOT qualified for this or can i assume any mom & pop store in any industry is considered a small business? TIA
Have you done the math? The sales tax benefits of trading your car in might very well likely outweigh any points you get from putting your car on your platinum card.
Wouldn’t you only need to pay sales tax if your car appreciated in value? You’ve already paid sales tax when you originally purchased the vehicle, so double taxation is disallowed.
Yes. The short story is that by stacking the Amex Platinum card +4x referral bonus (which is good on up to $25K spend, since expired but I am in the earn period) and the 125K welcome bonus and the +14x small business bonus (which is good on up to $25K spend), I’d stand to earn 600,000 Membership Rewards points with a $25K purchase (marginally less now given I’ve made some purchases like the ones in this post). Redeemed for a deposit in a Schwab brokerage account with the Schwab Platinum, that would be $6,600. More realistically, I’d use those points on something like 4 business class round-the-world tickets with stops in 8 cities booked via ANA, which would have a retail value well beyond that. Either way, the value far outweighs the tax benefit of trading in.
I don’t see what sales tax has to do with the method of payment for a newly purchased car. These are two totally separate considerations.
There may be a slight bit of variance in how this works by state, but in a nutshell his point is that if for example I pay for a $30,000 car outright, I’ll owe sales tax on $30,000. If I trade in a car and they give me $25,000 towards the purchase, I’ll only pay sales tax on the $5,000 difference. So depending on the value of your trade-in vehicle, selling it privately could come at a considerable cost in terms of how much sales tax you could have saved. Obviously the flip side is that you can hopefully sell for enough of a difference to make that up.
Yes, I sure understand this part. But that’s assuming too much. On the flip side, you might be buying a car for $35K and your trade-in might be worth $10K and then even if you do trade-in and reap all the sales tax savings, you still have $25K to put on Amex. Or you may be somewhere in the middle and maybe you’ll end up putting just $20K on Amex and do separate small business spending for the rest.
I’m sure being a savvy guy you will consider all these options. My point was, one of the first rules in buying a car is to consider all parts of transaction separately. Whether to trade-in or not should be based on the difference between trade-in offer and anticipated private sale amount divided across the guesstimated amount of effort to sell privately and not at all on the purchase price or method of payment for the new car.
Medical and dental bills, car repair, H-mart ( grocery store), Vet visit, pool service, pest control…
Nick, When I called Amex regarding which transactions coded as 14x, I couldn’t get a straight answer-and the website gives no clear clue either. For a financial institution, I’m surprised by the lack of transparency and coordination. I love Chase but I’m definitely not getting that loving feeling out of AMEX. Have you gotten any better communication from Amex regarding which transactions code as 14x? They can make a mistake and there is no way to catch it….
I’m having the same problem—all the people I have spoke to at Amex have no idea what is being coded as small business-except to use the “Map”, which doesn’t work very well.
Then, they lump all my charges together, so I have to spend an hour with a calculator trying to figure out what was coded as small business. Does anyone have an easier way to find out what has been coded as small business?
No, I don’t think there is any way to know apart from making a test charge, and after the fact the only way I know how to figure it out is to bust out the calculator.
While frustrating, it isn’t entirely Amex’s fault. They’re dealing with what are likely millions of individually-owned small businesses. They don’t know when one is going to change its payment process or merchant category code or something. It isn’t really under their control how those small businesses process payments. I do wish it were clearer what it is that triggers “small business” for them so you could try to verify it with the merchant, but at the end of the day I think it’s just hard for them to guarantee.
I would assume that Amex is either charging some fee for businesses to participate or perhaps offering a break on fees in exchange for more information on what customers buy. Either way, I think it is probably possible that an individual business could change something on their end that messes it up. Definitely makes it tough.
Do you know how long it’s taking for the points to show up for Shop Small purchases? I’ve noted any dining purchases typically post the bonus 9 / 14 points in 3 days, but I have had several recent Shop Small purchases (that are listed on map) not post at all.
Has anyone had success with paying daycare tuition. My concern is that we use a nationally franchised day care and I know franchises often will not trigger as small business
Are you going to run a test charge at your dealer first to make sure it codes right? Great post, I’ve been running small test charges all over the place just to see. I assume most won’t code shop small but you never know. I even did different small local grocery stores of the same chain just in case one comes up differently.
Nick, looks like you are on the road to a 600,000 win! After reading your posts, I referred my husband via a AMEX link to get the additional 4x points. Now I am fighting with them to get those 4x points that they are saying he didn’t go through the link. sigh, there is work to this game…
What a beautiful family nick !! Count those blessings every day !
Good times with the family and 19x to boot (great pic). These are the days.
Holiday roast…
It appears your son had more fun with you on the racetrack than Greg did back in the UAE.
Nick, that’s a lovely picture of your family!
A data point on car buying: I was able to get a business partner’s new 2022 Hyundai Elantra purchased via his Platinum card. In his case, getting additional $1,500 dealer rebate required at least $10K of the purchased be financed by Hyundai Motor financing (at a perfectly reasonable 2.9%). So he put the $13k balance of the purchase (plus license, registration, tax, etc.) on the Amex card, willingly paying an extra $300 to help offset the merchant card fees. Note that this dealership WAS on the small business map.
It all worked out perfectly. > 300k points posted as soon as he paid off the charge (SUB plus the 15x for the $13K).
Good luck with your purchase, and happy holidays!
Any advice here? As soon as my P2 got card, she bought her dress at a small business in NJ that is not on the map. I went back and forth with Amex and had them open an investigation and they refused to honor it as a 15x category. Anything to be done?
What car are you buying? Are you doing two player mode to pay it off with two resy plats?
I’ll share more details once I’m done with it. I’m buying used, not new, so one player mode will work (and my wife previously opened the Vanilla Platinum last year when the 100K + 10x offer came around, so she isn’t eligible).
What are you selling? Looks like a highlander? You should offer to sell it to the FM community 🙂 BTW, do you take card and are you a small business?