(Hat Tip to everyone on Twitter)
Good morning everyone, there are a few new AMEX Offers worth mentioning today: Home Depot, Whole Foods, Fairway Market, and Hilton Garden Inn. For the Home Depot offer, spend $75 or more in-store or online and receive a $15 statement credit.
Home Depot only sells Home Depot gift cards online, but they have a traditional gift card rack in store. I will try to go to Home Depot tonight and take some pics of the gift card rack.
For the Whole Foods offer, spend $75 in-store or online and receive a $10 statement credit.
Whole Foods only sells Whole Foods gift cards online, but they may sell third party gift cards in store. Luckily for me, there is a Whole Foods down the street from me that I can check out.
For the Fairway Market offer, spend $75 or more in-store or online and receive a $15 statement credit. I believe this is a small grocery chain on the East Coast and the closest location to me is in New Jersey.
Fairway Market only sells Fairway Market gift cards online, I have no idea if they sell any other gift cards in-store.
Last but not least, for the Hilton Garden Inn offer, spend $150 or more and receive a $30 statement credit. This offer is specific to Hilton Garden Inn, so I don’t think other Hilton properties will trigger the statement credit.
If anyone in the Bay Area is interested, there is a Hilton Garden Inn near Emeryville/Oakland. I would recommend calling first to see if they sell gift cards before visiting the hotel.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone.
I stopped in at my local Fairway market this morning to ask this very question. I was told that Fairway does NOT sell any gift cards other than for their own store. Here are some other pointers…. Fairway is coded as a supermarket. Though not certain for 2015, but for prior years, it participated in Amex small business Saturday, so I did buy some gift cards for future use. Also, I recently wrote this blog post about their new $5 specials (at least at the NYC Upper East Side Location in response to Whole Foods opening up around the corner!):Whole Foods Lit a Fire Under Fairway! http://willrunformiles.boardingarea.com/whole-foods-lit-a-fire-under-fairway/#sthash.nuU83nTN.dpbs and this post on Elliot.org How Whole Foods lit a fire under a competitor — and why that’s good for you http://elliott.org/commentary/how-whole-foods-lit-a-fire-under-a-competitor-and-why-thats-good-for-you/
Thank you for the research, Kathy. Too bad that Fairway Market only sells their own gift cards. I will check out your articles too.
Hey Grant,
None of these offers show up in my AMEX account. If I call AMEX and ask to have the offers added, will that pretty much back fire on me–since they probabably target spenders who wouldn’t normally be thinking about visiting Home Depot?
No one knows how AMEX targets different accounts for various AMEX Offers. I think it has to do with region of the country and shopping history. With that said, you can still enroll your AMEX cards by using AMEX Sync. You can tweet #AmexHomeDepot or #AmexWFM to manually add the offer to your AMEX card.
Will VGC (or similar) purchases trigger these offers from Home Depot and WFs?
Didn’t see any VGC at WF, but bought VGC at HD and triggered the offer
@star, what denomination did you buy?
I did $100 visa GC with 5.95 fee.
You must have gone early since my Home Depot was cleaned out of $50 and $100 VGCs, only lowly $25 VGCs were left.
I did go in the morning, there were plenty. But nice thing is they’ll restock before the deal is over, unlike Office Depot which never seemed to restock! I think #AmexHomeDepot made Slickdeals front page today so the offer reached full enrollment super quickly.
P.S. and heh, I will find out about HGI for you. :)
Thank you Star, I noticed that the #AmexHomeDepot was maxed out. That was fast.
My Whole Foods does not sell gift cards from anywhere but Whole Foods. Good luck, since YMMV.
Wish I had received the Hilton Garden Inn offer, since I am staying there in a couple of weeks…
Tweet #AmexHGI :)
My local Whole Foods only sells their gift cards as well. Good tip on tweeting #AmexHGI.
The playing field is changing with these AMEX offers. You now need to carefully read the terms and conditions every time. One offer I received over the weekend stated that gift card purchases were excluded UNLESS a regular purchase was included in the transaction! How would they even know? Seems like the recent Sam’s Club experience uproar has triggered a modification. Even the new Home Depot offer now has language excluding online gift card purchases entirely.
My AMEX offer to Home Depot also excludes “gift cards sold by third parties” – does that mean this offer doesn’t apply to VGC purchases made in store?
I bought VGC just fine in the store and triggered the credit
I bought 3 $25 Starbucks GCs and $75 worth of Panera GCs in-store and both transactions triggered the AMEX Offer. Pretty much every AMEX Offer says GCs are excluded, but that is hardly ever enforced.
I’ve never known a WF to sell third-party gift cards. But here’s to hoping :)
I was hopeful too, but it looks like they only sell Whole Foods GCs.
I snagged a few and sold them to giftcardmart.com for 90% face value…
I think their regular seller portal is still malfunctioning, but when I called them and verified a few things with them they set me up as a bulk seller so I could sell the cards to them electronically!
Plus, it helps that they’re just down the road :D
I can’t even go to that website right now…
“We’re sorry, but GiftCard Mart is currently undergoing maintenance.” :(
Hopefully I can get in soon. Is there a max GC amount they allow? I thought I was being smart in getting one $450 GC (6 Amex cards split tender) but Cardpool only takes up to $200 for Whole Foods. :(
Is the HD offer good for gift cards? The way I interpret the fine print, seems to me that it isn’t ‘…gift cards sold by third parties and corporate gift cards are exluded’.
I bought $100 VGCs at HD – Amex Offer triggered :)
Emeryville shoutout! I live across the street from that Hilton Garden Inn…can see it from my window :)
Nice, now go across the street and check it out for me :)
The way they worded the exclusions can be interpreted either only third party GC purchased online are excluded, or all of them.
Had success in HD visa and mc gift card did self check out had to show first time id and after that’s it was flowing reload at kate was fine(no 49.99), no third party gift cards at WF and Fairway
Thanks you for the data points. Seems like Home Depot s the only merchant that sells 3rd party gift cards.
Pingback: Home Depot and Whole Foods AMEX Offer Gift Card Update (Pics of Gift Card Rack) | Travel with Grant
As someone who loves whole foods I’m stoked with my ten Amex cards that’s $100 off $750. If you don’t shop there much or are not near one you can buy online and sell to gift card selling sites, whole foods yields one of the highest resale rates at like 92% of the value which yields a 5.33% profit on $75 better than nothing.
I’m glad a loyal Whole Foods shopper will get some discounted GCs. Enjoy!
test
Nice pic Rhi!
So did any Hilton Gardens sell gift cards?
Sounds like they do not, but I’ve only heard from one HGI.
Pingback: Reload your BART Clipper Card and Activate Whole Foods AMEX Offer | Travel with Grant