American Express launched some great Amex Offers for Platinum cardholders last week. One of those was for WineInsiders.com which gave $30 back when spending $30+. While not as good as the BestBuy.com and HomeDepot.com offers, it had the appearance of a decent offer which meant you could pick up almost-free wine.
Ordinarily we recommend taking advantage of any and all stacking opportunities. That can include using promo codes, card-linked programs, shopping portals, etc. With this particular Wine Insiders Amex Offer though, we’d recommend using caution with using promo codes and shopping portals.
The reason why is due to some of the exclusions listed:
Excludes voucher purchases, taxes and shipping costs and promotional offers through www.wineinsiders.com/promos/ , www.wineinsiders.com/promotion/ , www.wineinsiders.com/collections/ , and www.wineinsiders.com/vouchers. Excludes Refer A Friend promo codes at Checkout.
There are comments on the Doctor of Credit post about this offer which suggest that doing anything other than visiting the site directly and buying regularly-priced wine will affect the tracking of the offer.
For example, one person clicked through from Rakuten to earn cashback and didn’t receive confirmation from American Express that they’d used the offer. That’s not always an issue with Amex Offers as they sometimes track even if you didn’t receive a confirmation email, but in this case they cancelled their order and re-ordered after not clicking through from a shopping portal. That second order did trigger the Amex Offer statement credit, so assuming they ordered the same wine with the second order as they did the first, it seems like the tracking from the affiliate program affected the offer.
That seems to be backed up by another comment relating to a past Wine Insiders Amex Offer. They placed an order via a portal which didn’t track, whereas a second order not placed via a portal did track.
Another DoC reader noticed that clicking the ‘Gifts & Sets’ menu option takes you to https://wineinsiders.com/collections/shop-all-wine-sets. Orders from https://wineinsiders.com/collections/ are excluded from the offer, so that presumably means deals under the ‘Gifts & Sets’ listing are also excluded.
It therefore seems like the safest option for taking advantage of this offer is to buy wine from the main ‘Wine’ tab which takes you to https://wineinsiders.com/categories.
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The terms stated that you needed to spend 30 without tax and shipping so spending 15 plus the 15 shipping probably won’t trigger it. I didn’t want to take a chance and ordered as close to 50 (just over) with the case free shipping.
Agree with comments. Also if you are a wine lover and have specific wines you prefer maybe it makes sense. I don’t drink a lot of wine but found I could find wines I like cheaper at my local wine shop than through this site. That is outside of the limitations on reimbursement. Also, if you don’t order at least $50 (as I recall) there is a shipping fee which in my case was $15. I tried to order a couple bottles of wine in the $15-$20 range to get value from this offer but then when you call the shipping cost (and fact the prices IMHO aren’t that great) plus any possibility of not getting the $30 credit it is a pass.
I have already marked this one down at something I won’t be using. IMHO, it only makes sense to use these reimbursement offers if you would have bought it anyway. In the case of the $30 paypal reimbursement that is easy and I also can easily find things at Best Buy and Home Depot I would buy but am pretty selective and not falling for the “I got $150 worth of stuff for $100” angle when I wouldn’t have bought anything from the vendor in the first case.
I’ve gotten mixed results between P1 and P2. I’ve bought the wine set, used a promo code, and got the offer credit. To get the offer the charge needs to show as “wine insider”. When I did the same exact promo on P2 it was charged “Hemispheres Wine Insiders” Which does not qualify for the offer. Also, doing the refer a friend promos also excludes you from the offer.
This is a really helpful discussion – thank you. I ordered three boxes – two hoping to use my own Amex Offer and one using my wife’s -but through Martha Stewart Wine Company, which is the same outfit. Fortunately I had a hunch something wouldn’t work so I held off on using it a fourth time. My Amex Offer never did work because I used a 40% code that they emailed me inviting me to order. So I opened up a chat session on their website and told them that I wanted to return all of my orders because I didn’t like how they did business. The chat agent offered me a 40% refund on all three boxes and I could keep all three boxes – pretty much the same as the Amex Offer. Hopefully this may help some of us?
did they apply it to your existing order? when I talked to the agent, she only offered a discount on my future order. I am not about to play the game again if this is this hard
[…] Update 1/10/21: readers note that with this offer the fine print seems to really be enforced – you need to make an ordinary purchase from the site without attaching any portals, promos, etc. If you do, the AmEx credit won’t post. Hat tip to Frequentmiler […]
Portals do not work
Coupons that are not on their website do not work
They will occasionally have 35%-40% coupons on their website. Offer works with these coupons.
In for 50+ bottles last year for $330 out of pocket, $110 in amex offers- $210 out of pocket at about $4 per bottle.
Everything you wrote here is spot on. My experience two months ago: I went thru a portal to save $3, and the Amex offer never posted. Okay, I’d never seen that before…these guys are clever enough to capture that info, probably whenever they see an order being paid for by an Amex…
This time around, I ordered 2 sets of wine from them. They cancelled the 2nd order. Never contacted me to tell me that. When I wrote to them, they said it was cancelled because the price was incorrectly posted on the website. (Huh?) Yet they allowed one of the 2 orders thru!
The wine is bad anyways–think “Martha Stewart wine club” quality. perfectly good for cooking, tho.
I used a portal. I got$15 instead of $30. Amex didn’t track. I cancelled. Complete waste of time
I’ve spent $97 and gotten 108 bottles. I’m a fan.
Best option on this offer is to not participate.
Yep. It appears as though my free wine cost me about $40.
I went through Rakuten and it didn’t post. I called and was told same thing. Never had this issue before…good post for those who like these wine deals