2021.1 Update: We don’t typically post specific offers but the last round that went out to Platinum Card Holders who have had their accounts since before Nov 2020 are too lucrative to not mention.
2018.1 Update: Now AmEx stopped the option to add AmEx Offers via Twitter/Facebook, and in the future all AmEx Offers must be added via AmEx website. Then all third party AmEx cards will no longer be able to use AmEx Offers. HT: DoC.
Contents
Introduction
Amex Offers is a very lucrative discount program for Amex cardholders that provides bonus Membership Rewards (MR) points or cashback in the form of statement credits for shopping at particular merchants.
Eligibility
The following account types are eligible to register for Amex offers:
- Amex-issued personal credit and charge card accounts
- Amex-issued business credit and charge card accounts
- Authorized user accounts, as long as the account number varies from the primary account number
- Third-party issued Amex cards (American Express Connect)
- Serve and Bluebird prepaid accounts (the Target REDCard is not eligible)
Enrollment
You must enroll your eligible account in the Amex offer prior to completing the offer, otherwise the promotion will not apply. This can be accomplished in a few different ways:
- Your Amex Login – available offers are displayed below the current statement charges for each Amex account. Each offer will have a button that says “Add to Card,” which must be clicked in order to apply the offer to that card only. After Applying an offer, it will appear in the “Added to Card” tab at the top of the Amex Offers & Benefits section. Note that some offers will only be available via Amex login, and not the other methods mentioned in this section.
- Serve and Bluebird apps – Amex offers can be manually added via the Serve and Bluebird apps (only if you have a Serve or Bluebird account).
Social Media – offers are sometimes released only through social media. This is the only way to add offers to your third-party issued Amex account. Sync your Amex account with either Facebook or Twitter here.Facebook -one eligible Amex card can be connected to one Facebook account, and you can view your available and added offers via Facebook here.Twitter – each promotional offer has its own hastag in the form of #AmexMERCHANT (e.g. #AmexChevron, #AmexNike, etc.). Once an Amex account is connected to Twitter, tweet the hashtag for the offer to add it to your account.
Remember, not all offers will be accessible via all enrollment platforms. Some offers are specific to social media, others may be specific to your Amex login.
Offers may only be added once per Amex login, and only one Amex account can be synced to Twitter or Facebook at one time. Once the offer is added to one of your accounts, it will disappear from the other accounts. There are workarounds to this, as described below.
Amex Offers Basics
After logging into your Amex account, your available offers will be displayed below the current statement charges for each account. Some Amex Offers are added only to specific account types (e.g. cashback or MR, business or personal), while other offers will be available to all your Amex accounts.
Targeted Amex offers are often geography dependent and will only appear if your card is registered within a select geographic footprint. Restaurant promotions often fall into this category. Targeted offers are not available for addition on Amex cards issued by another bank (e.g. the BBVA issued NBA Amex).
Most Amex offers are not targeted, though different offers will have different redemption requirements. For example, some offers only require you add the promotion to your Amex account before using, and other offers will require you to make a purchase through a specific website. Some offers can only be redeemed once, while others can be redeemed more than once. Always check the offer Terms and Conditions, which can be viewed by clicking on the offer you are interested in.
Adding One Offer to Multiple Accounts (No Longer Possible)
Once you see an offer available on multiple accounts, you may be interested in saving that offer to multiple accounts in hopes of using the offer multiple times. Multiple approaches to accomplish this are available.The easiest way is through the multi-tab method. Open a separate browser tab for each of your Amex credit, charge, or prepaid accounts, then navigate to the Amex Offers and Benefits section of each account. Select the offer one by one on each of your cards. Note that once you save the offer to one card, it will disappear for any account that does not have a tab or browser window open. For that reason, you must do this process quickly and before timing out from the Amex website.
The next easiest way to add Amex offers to multiple accounts is through having multiple Twitter accounts. You can also do this with Facebook, but Twitter is easier. Frequent Miler has a great summary on different ways to accomplish this.
If you’re using Twitter to sync Amex offers to your account, you could also add an Amex account to Twitter, tweet the #offer, unsync the Amex account from Twitter, and repeat this for each account.
You can also create a separate login for each Amex account, but that is hard to track relative to the above methods.
The only thing that could potentially resemble this and be helpful is that Authorized User accounts of the same card seem to sometimes have the offers available!
Saving $$$
Amex offers provide a great way to save money on purchases you were already going to make, like when I was able to to save money on an engagement ring. If you shop often at a vendor and have an offer that will expire before you can use it, you can see if giftcards are available to that vendor for future use. Purchasing Visa, Mastercard, or Amex giftcards can also be a good way to maximize offers.
Statement Credit or Membership Rewards Credit
Amex offers come in the form of either statement credits or bonus MR points. Once an offer is used, you will receive an email with the subject line “You Just Used Your Amex Offer!” The terms on each offer vary, though typically they say it can take up to 90 days for the bonus or credit or points to post. In practice this usually happens within a few days.
Summary
Amex offers provide a reliable way to save money. I view them as a way to pay for the high annual fee of some products, such as the Amex Business Platinum and the Amex Premier Rewards Gold. Last year I was able to save or earn thousands of dollars by taking advantage of a handful of lucrative Amex offers from Staples, Office Max, Exxon, Best Buy, and many others.
Questions about the Amex Offers program? Post them in the comments section!