New AMEX Membership Rewards feature: use Rewards to pay for Best Buy online purchases

If you are participating in the American Express Membership Rewards program (different from the Amex Blue Cash rewards), and you also shop at the Best Buy website, there’s now a new feature for you. You can use your AMEX rewards points to pay for a Best Buy website purchase, partially or fully, using your AMEX points.

amex_membership_rewards_use_at_bestbuy_website
To do that, enter your AMEX credit card to your Best Buy account (if not already there), and when it is verified and synced (or whatever they need to do in the background), you will see your points and their equivalent dollar value. The e-mail does not say what is the conversion ratio.

It would be nice if it was 1:1, but since they don’t say, one has to wonder. Some promotions, like the Discover-Amazon link offers a 1:1 link, while others, like Citi’s ThankYou-Amazon link is less than 1:1 (not as favorable to the consumer).

October 5, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , ,

YMMV: Get 1000 Membership Rewards points with $50+ purchase at Whole Foods B&M

This is a targeted promotion that is part of the American Express credit card offers, for cards with Membership Rewards points. The promotion runs from 9/1 to 10/31 in 2015, and gets you 1000 Membership Reward points if you make a purchase of $50 or more at a Whole Foods store. This amount has to be reached in a one in-store transaction (any combination of items that gets you to $50+).

If you stick close to the $50 mark, it is essentially a 20% discount, assuming you are planning to use the 1000 rewards points in a 1:1 (points to pennies) exchange rate later on (for example, redeem them for gift cards for other merchants).

wholefoods_membership_rewards_offer

The offer is limit one for the promotional period. As usual, you have to first manually opt-in, which is easier than it sounds, you just press the “Add to Cart” button on your account. While many of the offers are shared between this and the AMEX Blue cards (so you can choose which one to activate it on), this one, because it is a Membership Rewards promotion, it is not eligible (does not show up) in the Blue AMEX Offers.

With the Amex Blue offers, I did a combination of physical goods and gift card purchases and the promotion worked fine. This is the first time I am doing the Membership Points offer, but since gift cards are not excluded in the terms and conditions, it should be fine.

September 2, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , ,

Aug 30 – Sept 5: $20 Staples Gift Card via Easy Rebate with purchase of $300+ in AMEX Gift Cards

In an era of bubbles and bears, it’s hard to find a guaranteed 2% return on investment with a 30 day vesting period. But you can. For the week of August 30 until the close of business on Saturday September 5 in 2015, at Staples brick and mortar stores, if you purchase $300 or more in American Express gift cards, you qualify for a $20 Staples Gift Card to be delivered to you via Easy Rebate in about 4-6 weeks after your purchase. The Easy Rebate is submitted online, you don’t mail anything. Just enter information from your cash register receipt into the Staples rebate website.

You can get to $300 with two AMEX gift cards, with activation fees of $7 ($200 gift card) and $6 ($100 gift card). With the $20 Staples gift card factored in, you are making a $7 profit, a 2.33% return on investment.

If you haven’t done this before, here’s how it goes. You pay $300 + $13 in service fees at the register. You go home, submit the Easy Rebate (online; not mail-in rebate), and 4-6 weeks later you receive a $20 Staples Gift Card. Assuming you can spend or use or gift the gift card, you are coming ahead. You paid $313 at checkout and have $320 of buying power.

staples_AMEX_gift_card_promotion_with_easyrebate

August 27, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , , ,

Reward Redemption Sale: 10% off select merchant Gift Cards (AMEX Membership Rewards)

If you are part of the American Express Membership Rewards program, and you have accumulated enough rewards points to be able to participate in this promotion, good until 8/31/15, you get 10% off in points needed to redeem rewards from select merchants, including the Staples, Pottery Barn and the GAP group of companies. Check your emails from AMEX or their Rewards website for more details.

Remember this offer is if you already have enough rewards in your account. This is not a general sale on the gift cards…

discount_on_gift_cards_with_amex_membership_rewards

August 24, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , ,

Caution: American Express Prepaid Card will start charging fees 10/15/15

If you have an American Express Prepaid Card (not to be confused with Gift Cards), starting October 15 in 2015 they will begin charging a $4.95 monthly fee (except for three states that probably have laws against it (New York, Arkansas, Texas)). You cannot avoid the monthly fee no matter what. The easiest way to deal with this is to use up your remaining balance before the new fees arrive. Screenshot of the relevant parts of the email below:

amex_prepaid_new_fees

The reason they are doing this is likely because they recently launched a new prepaid option, the American Express Serve, which has more benefits than the Prepaid but it’s a different card and you have to apply for it separately.

If you have a card, you may have received an email from them outlining this transition. The email also mentions an offer that encourages customers to apply for the new Serve card: get a $25 account credit if you spend $25 or more with a new Serve account.

June 9, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: ,

June 7-13: Get $20 Gift Card via Easy Rebate with $300+ AMEX Gift Cards

For the brick and mortar shopping week of June 7-13 in 2015, at Staples stores, you can get a $20 Staples Gift Card via Easy Rebate (submitted online, nothing to mail or copy) if you purchase $300 or more in American Express Gift Cards. To get to $300, you typically need two gift cards. With the fees factored in, you typically make a profit of about $7, a 2.33% return on investment with a one month vesting period. Who else can guarantee this type of a return? 🙂

staples_amex_easyrebate_offer

NOTE: The Staples promotions of this kind typically have Easy Rebates. The OfficeDepot/OfficeMax offers have a discount on the purchase price, so you get the discount right away at the register, no rebates, no house gift cards.

June 4, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , , ,

Signing up for Plenti Rewards (as a previous Rite Aid Rewards member)

If you are/were a Rite Aid shopper, chances are you are/were part of their Rewards program. And Rite Aid is changing things up again, this time they are moving their reward program to the more general-purpose Plenti Rewards program that has various retailers and services also hooked into. Think of it as a sort of Fatwallet for brick and mortar and online shopping and services – of sorts.

So as an existing Rite Aid shopper, I showed the cashier my old Wellness+ Rewards card. The cashier did some work (and check that my info was corrected) and handed me a new Plenti booklet that includes a full-size and a keychain size plastic Plenti rewards card, along with some more information and, of course, the obligatory Terms and Conditions. If you look around the RiteAid store, you may also notice a checkbook-size Plenti booklet that describes some of the initial promotions, it’s called “Save with welcome offers worth over $100 inside”.

In case it wasn’t clear, the Plenti Rewards program is part of American Express, which definitely explains why you can link it to the Membership Rewards program and transfer points there.

UPDATE: I added a section on how to contact Plenti Customer Support at the bottom of this post…

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May 21, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , , ,

AMEX Offers: Spend $5+ at iTunes, Get $5 back

If you have an American Express card, check your latest AMEX offers! Among them is a new one from iTunes, if you spend $5 or more, you will receive $5 back as a statement credit. This can be used once per account and expires 8/31/15. Items must be delivered before then, so don’t use it on long term pre-orders. You must purchase content at iTunes, not gift cards, and not Apple devices or hardware. Terms and conditions are after the break for your convenience:

amex_itunes_offer

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May 13, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , ,

AMEX Offers: Spend $20+ at Sam’s Club website, get $20 back

If you have an American Express card that is eligible for the “AMEX Offers”, check your account. They launched a new offer is pretty pretty good. You spend $20 or more at the Sam’s Club website, and you receive $20 back as a statement credit on your account. The offer is not good at Sam’s Club brick and mortar stores, only their website.

You have to manually opt-in to the offer from your AMEX account before you can use it. You can only use it once during this promotional period which ends 9/30/15. The item must ship before the deadline, so don’t use this offer on pre-orders of unpredictable shipment. There are restrictions which you can find under the “Term” section over there.

Screenshot of the offer below:

samsclub_amexoffers

May 1, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: ,

AMEX Offer: Spend $50+, Get $25 statement credit at Smart and Final

If you have an American Express card, check your offers! Currently, at least on the Amex Blue card, you may be offered a very hot Smart and Final promotion. Spend $50 or more and get $25 back as a statement credit. Not only that, but you can use this offer up to three times during the promotional period which ends 6/30/15. I don’t know how they target these, so there might be a YMMV component, I obviously can only check mine own account. Screenshot of the offer right below:

amex_smart_and_final_offer

The terms are pasted after the jump for reference:

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April 15, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: ,

Targeted: Get 10c for every purchase with AMEX Serve

This is a targeted offer, for some members of the American Express Prepaid cards. If you upgrade to their new Serve reloadable card, you will earn 10c for each transaction you make until 5/31/15. Check your emails to see if you have received this offer if you are a Prepaid user. A lot of people joined in a couple of years ago when AMEX was giving people $10 bonuses with a $50+ account. Do note however that the new Serve card has a $1 monthly fee unless you set up monthly direct deposit or load $500+ per month on the card. So keep that in mind!

Here is the promotion from the email:

amex_prepaid_to_serve_promotion

March 31, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: ,