Weekend Cash Back Update: AMEX Offers (Bed, Bath & Beyond, Courtyard Marriott, and Five Crowns), Staples ($5 Chime Rebate + Easy Rebate Paper), Vons / Pavillions / Safeway (MasterCard Gift Card Promo)
Happy Sunday afternoon everyone, I hope everyone is having a great weekend so far. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been busy this weekend. Busy saving money!
Yesterday afternoon, I stopped by my local Bed, Bath, & Beyond store and bought 4 $25 gift cards (Chipotle, Panera, and 2x Subway) to qualify for the $5 AMEX statement credit offer (link). I used 4 different AMEX credit cards.
My iPhone was going crazy, thank you AMEX.
And I also received the 4 automatic emails. The $5 statement credits should post in 2-3 days.
On Friday morning, I went to my local Courtyard Marriott and bought 2 $100 Marriott gift cards to receive the $20 cash back offer (link). I will use these gift cards to pay for my stay at the FTU Advanced Marriott in Chicago. Thanks to Frequent Miler for the idea (link).
2 more automated emails from American Express.
And a new offer for Five Crowns showed up in my account today. Get a $30 statement credit after spending $100.
In Chime Card news (link), I took advantage of the $5 cash back offer after spending $50. I was planning on buying a $200 gift card and doing a split payment of $50 on my Chime Card and the res on my Chase Ink Bold, but i stupidly left my Chase Ink Bold at home.
I ended up buying more gift cards for upcoming birthdays.
Another new offer, $5 cash back on a $35+ purchase at Applebee’s.
Last week they had a free after Easy Rebate and Coupon deal for paper. They are repeating that offer again this week. Make sure to tell the cashier the coupon code, otherwise you will not get the discount.
Yesterday morning, I woke up early and had a big community garage sale. I had about 5 of the 5-pack red boxes of paper and 6 single reams of paper that I sold for $2 apiece. All of that was Free After Rebate from Staples. I know some people have stacks of paper, so garage sales are a good way to get rid of it and make some easy money. These reams go for $5+ brand new in store.
This morning I was grocery shopping at Pavillion’s (upscale version of Von’s, owned by Safeway) and saw this banner near the checkout lane. The offer is pretty good, $10 coupon after purchasing $100+ of MasterCard gift cards. I was unaware of this promo earlier, but apparently the offer is valid from July 16 through August 12.
The coupon was not working properly or coded correctly with the register so the coupons did not print (I did 2 separate $500 transactions). The manager provided me with a $20 store gift card (no expiration date compared with a coupon). Your local store may/may not be coded correctly, if not, wait for a store manager to help you.
In other random news, I noticed a small GUI update when loading funds to Serve online. They now have buttons for predefined dollar amounts. I only need one button: $200.
Also, if anyone does anything with MyPoints, they have made a slight change to their redemption with United (old logo by the way). It used to be 5,900 MyPoints = 2,500 United miles and it took a few weeks for the miles to post. Apparently the offer is now 6,100 MyPoints = 2,500 United miles and they should post instantly. I am currently at 5,200+ MyPoints, so I will test this out soon. Read How I Earned 2,500 United Airlines Miles in 1 Year using MyPoints.
Last but not least, thank you to everyone who joined me and Travel Summary at In-N-Out last night. I got there at 6 PM and we had a good turnout, roughly 9-10 people showed up. I stayed until 11 PM (yes 5 hours of miles and points conversations) and most of you stayed until the end. I always joke that 2 hours (or 5 hours in this case) of meeting up in person with a group of miles and points experts beats reading FlyerTalk for 10-20 hours per week. The collective knowledge between a handful of us is just incredible.
The next OC Meetup might be sometime in September and I might go down to San Diego sometime in September or October. Nothing is planned, but I will try to make that happen.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.
San Diego again? YES!
Maybe… We usually meet up at La Jolla.
Grant,
You can also buy Visa, Master gift cards @ Bed Bath & Beyond.
Ya I saw those, but I decided on food gift cards instead.
The Safeway $10 MC offer says “excludes variable gift card”, so you definitely lucked out with that manager.
I guess so. I seem to get a lot of lucky breaks :)
almost got screwed at vons since the fine print says excludes variable gift card (the $20-$500 one). I argued for 5 minutes and they gave me a $10 vons gift card in the end
Good work Brandon, a little arguing goes a long way.
grant,
have you loaded any MC gift cards like the one you bought above to BB / Serve lately? still needs the “change payment method” trick? (curious to try …. have still never done one of these loads yet …)
Yes, all MC GCs should require the change payment workaround. I’ll let you know if anything has changed. I might stop by Walmart this morning.
Update: both MC GCs loaded fine but I had an issue with one of my OVGCs. Kept giving me payment not approved msg.
You can request a $ 10 coupon for what ever reason i t didn’t print out. It has worked for me
http://support.catalinamarketing.com/support/did-not-receive-expected-coupon
Also, If you still have the receipt. you can use the above link to request a $ 10 coupon
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