What is your Small Business Saturday Strategy?
T-minus 6 hours until Small Business Saturday begins (or t-minus 3 hours for those on the East Coast). Do you have a strategy for your AMEX-inspired shopping spree? The first thing you need to do is enroll every AMEX card you own (credit cards, charge cards, Bluebird cards, Serve cards, and all authorized user cards).
The second thing you need to do is scope out the businesses you want to visit. You can search for participating small businesses here.
The third thing you need to do is find the places you want to shop at and make a plan of attack. I have a bakery that opens early in the morning, next to a candy store that sells lots of candy, which is around the corner from a toy store, and across the street from a small supermarket.
If you do plan on maxing out all your AMEX cards, try to go early and beat the crowds. I will be upfront and tell the cashier that I am trying to take advantage of the AMEX Small Business Saturday promo. If they are on-board with that idea, the best thing to do is to see if they will do a split payment of exactly $10 across multiple AMEX cards, rather than doing individual transactions of $10 or more.
That’s my strategy, what is your strategy?
P.S. Here is a new AMEX Offer that came out today for Hyatt Place Hotels.
We’re getting coffee and pastry from the local bakery first. The kids are getting gift certificates to local stores in our town. We’ve hunted down every restaurant and fine food shop that issues gift certificates. I’ve prepared a spreadsheet matrix, so we can track usage against 5 different cards, 2 authorized users, for a total of $300 total. I’d love to hear how much others Are planning to spend and how….
I might do a low tech spreadsheet (pen and paper) to keep track of everything.
I have my favorite restaurant I am usually once a week…….I prepped the Gift Card “hostess” abut a month ago……I will go in about 3pm with 13 cards…….She will charge a $25 charge to each card 3 times and then give me their gift card to dine in the future…….I love this restaurant so it is win win for both of us………and I’ve finally changed my opinion of AMEX so I won’t be canceling the 13 cards………..
Great idea, I wish I could do something like that. This Saturday, I’m in Carmel, and I only come up here once a year, so I can’t really do this :(
At least you’re missing SBS in wonderful Carmel! I feel confident you will make the most of your day. We live in a small town near Colorado Springs so we have lots of options tomorrow. I made a list of our stops by priority plus a breakfast place. Depending on what we have left, we can stock up on holiday booze with our nice liquor store owner. I think it will be a fun day!
Very cool. Boarding Area HQ is in Colorado Springs so you better act fast in the morning :)
I did not know that–plenty to go around in my little town! :)
This will be my first SBS…. why go early is it just to avoid the lines or is there a limit to the number of people they can take advantage of an offer like some Amex offers and chime?
More so to avoid the crowds. You can go very late in the evening as well. I want to finish early so I can watch some college football games too.
BTW I HATE Boarding Area spell check! I’m really not that stupid!
Downtown Disney and surrounding area strategy. Sadly Orlando is chain restaurant territory, so small businesses are less obvious. But I’ve been doing my research for weeks now to plan the day.
If you ever go to Carmel-by-the-sea, every single business is a small business. There are 0 chain stores or restaurants. Which is good and bad.
I called the small-business restaurant across the street from my house today, and verified that they sell gift cards. I’m gonna try to buy $200 worth of gift cards paying $10 at a time.
I love the idea, you might have luck doing the $10 split payment too. Depends if they know how to do that.
Going to a couple favorite coffee shops and restaurant. Will go to grocery stores and stock up on paper products, eye solution, coffee pods, cereal etc. I’m a little nervous to do to many transactions at once. I hate holding people up.
Good plan, you might want to go early in the day when they are not as busy.
I am in get Groceries as so many small market participate in this promo.
Good idea, grocery stores are great places to shop.
Hi, Grant. So would it work to buy 1 gift certificate for, let’s say, $50-, do 5 split tender of $10- in a single transaction (a la Walmart)?
I meant, 5 split tender across 5 registered AMEX cards
Walmart would not be considered a small business, but your strategy would work at other places that sell gift cards or gift certificates.
Had been planning in buying gcs at a bunch of local restaurants then I realized the boutique where my fiancé is buying her wedding dress from is on the list. 50% of the dress has been paid for but I’m going to see about using roughly half of my $300 available there. More if they are cool with it!
That’s a great idea, I hope you can save some money on the wedding dress.
My doctor office is listed in SBS map but it will be closed on Saturday, what to do?
I’m afraid you will be out of luck unless you can convince the doctor to come in on Saturday. Does he sell gift cards?
I was able to get $150 of groceries! Not many businesses for me to work with or willing to go into those parts of town. First I considered gift certificates but figured I’d be buying food any way. I have 5 cards. I made 5 transactions of $10 or a little more then went to the car and repeated 2 more times. It seemed easy for me to do without creating a long line behind me. The trips to the car beat driving all over town.
That’s a good idea. Was there any pushback for checking out with 5 different transactions?
Not at all. I just feel weird when they say “Have a nice day”.but i just say “oh I’ll be back”. The biggest problem was making sure they scan the store card for the sale prices. I over paid on one order because the cashier was distracted. I think she had to pee! lol
Haha, distracted cashiers are the biggest obstacle to overcome. Glad your other orders went smoother.
Grant, what a smart idea to get stamps! I like practical. ;-)
Anyone want to buy the stamps from me? I’ll make you a good deal :)
I’m in for some discount stamps!
Would you be interested in 90% face value for the stamps?
I had some problems in Connecticut… as one merchant said he does not take amex cards,but was listed?
The deli said he never registered but was on the amex list?
One store did not have enough gift cards and one bakery put 30.00 in one sale instead of three separate,as i told her to do separate,and she could not refund it!
lots of problems today,all staff related!!! yuck!!!
I know exactly what you mean. I’ve had similar issues buying gift cards during other promos. It is really frustrating when they do not understand what you are trying to do. Oh well, you win some and lose some.
I emailed separately but hit up a bunch of places in irvine spectrum. In total about $300 of gc’s from all the places.
One word of warning though — not all businesses listed on the map actually will work. I tried to buy some gc’s at zara in Cerritos (zara is a large clothing chain …. I randomly saw the Cerritos one listed on the amex small biz map so we trekked on up there!). But when I bought them I didn’t get the confirmation email that I got with all the other purchases …. Kinda a bummer but oh well! Still a quite successful small biz Saturday
There are still some glitches in SBS. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. You got a great haul though.
I did a few in irvine as well. It’s my first year participating in SBS and my first one wax a bust! The Amex map showed 85c so I planned on getting $30 worth of breakfast goodies there split into 3 cards, then a bunch of $10 gc’s. I picked up a kinds of delicious baked goods to go over 30bux then once at the register they tell me they don’t take amex! Oh the horror! I felt bad returning all 20 something items so I just paid for it all anyway :(. The rest I got gc’s from luna grill, ace hardware, and my nail salon. Oh and lunch at Indian buffet. All in all, $240 worth (less the 30 fr 85c), still came out ahead though :)
Sounds like you did pretty well after the 85C mishap. Same thing happened to me at one business. Thanks for sharing your experience with SBS in Irvine :)
Emails for most of my purchases. But my platinum card only got one email and I ended up using it 5 times. My first purchase, no email. Second purchase a success. Third purchase no email (but this store worked for other cards). So now I’m wondering with one email and three purchases, am I done? Did the first one not work? So I spent again. Still no email. Spent one last time at a store where another card worked. Still no email. Surely of those 5 purchases, hopefully I’ll get my $30. If not I do have proof those stores worked on other cards, so a quick call to amex should do the trick and I’m only out $20 for the 2 extra purchases. Hopefully!
I’ve heard mixed results regarding email confirmations. For the most part, the emails worked very well. Hopefully it is not too much trouble for AMEX customer service. All purchases should post on Monday or Tuesday and statement credits should post Tuesday or Wednesday. If not, I would call on Friday to see if they can manually post a credit to my account.
I got home from my restaurant gift card run to find 42 emails from AMEX in the in box…….Thank you AMEX!
Nice job. All the emails are clogging up my iPhone :)
Grant, this worked out better than expected, in this third year of me doing Shop Small Saturday! I decided to get strategic and buy something durable, and needed, rather than goof off and just buy liquor, or restaurant certificates, like I had in the past. So, I got a cooperative ski shop to swipe all 25 of my AMEX cards (including Auth users, Bluebirds, etc) 3 times each, for a total of $750 in free money at one store, one location. It took about 45 mins worth of swipes and a cooperative POS and patient cashier to get it done, but they were willing to please!
Some notable points: the multiple swipes of $10 in one store did NOT trigger a fraud alert with AMEX… despite concerns by some others (No slow-downs!) I processed my cards in batches of 5 CCs, rotating each of the 5 until 3 swipes done, then signed receipts for a $150 ski gift card. Then I repeated that process 5 times, removing the first batch of 5 to avoid duplicate swipes that would not earn credits.
I would like to know if anyone had one merchant at one location agree to swipe more than 75 times! That guy with 55 AMEX cards should have some tales!
That is a great success story, I’m glad you got to use all your swipes at one merchant. A friend of mine was able to get $1,400+ of gas gift cards from the same gas station :) He is a bit crazy.
2 bottles vodka, one whiskey, four wine, 6 pack beer and 5 burritos. Thanks amex!
Party at your place next weekend!
I took my family to lunch at a restaurant I found on the SMS map. When i tried to pay the bill with my amex cards they told me they only accept Visa or Mastercard! Doh!!!!! Next year I’ll call in advance to make sure the place accepts Amex rather than trusting that #$@&*% map!
I noticed several merchants that have gone out of business on the map.
AMEX probably hasn’t updated their map in a few years. It might be time for an update.
Our very 1st stop for breakfast was on the list & did not take AMEX–not a great start for convincing hubby how fun this was going to be! I had a lot of businesses that were long gone on there, too, & several that no longer accepted the card. BUT, fun day overall & all of the merchants we went to were understanding about splitting up transactions. They just want the business. Thanks AMEX & thanks for all the info on your blog, Grant!
You’re welcome Michelle. I will probably have a post called Things I learned from Small Business Saturday from personal experience and other people’s stories.
That happened to me. So lame!