Good morning everyone, just a few quick pieces of info regarding AMEX Offers to pace along. This is my final update regarding the AMEX Offer for a $25 statement credit after making a purchase of $100 or more at Staples.com.
I bought a $200 Visa Gift Card and a $100 Southwest Airlines eGift Card from Staples.com and both purchases resulted in the $25 statement credit.
Here are a few other AMEX Offers that I noticed this morning. Check your AMEX account for other targeted offers. Click on the first image and then use the left and right arrow keys to view all images.
Last but not least, here are the latest offers from Chime. Nothing major to report, but there could be some good deals for you. I recommend checking out the Chime in the New Year post if you have a Chime Card already. If you do not have a Chime Card, please read this post.
I’m going to work on my Throwback Thursday post: My Run-In with the American Express Financial Review (happened 2+ years ago, but I never blogged about the whole story). If you have any questions about any of the deals from above, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!
So has anyone actually received the $25 credit for purchasing a gift card yet?
Yes, I bought a $200 VGC and received the $25 statement credit on my AMEX card.
I also received it on 4 of my cards and waiting on 3 more cards.
Excellent, Did you unload via BB? If so, did you have to set up PIN or just use last 4 digits of card?
Was just waiting for this confirmation. Others in SD as well confirmed for Visa GC. I went ahead and order 9 VGCs on mine and my wife’s card total. Hopefully this wont trigger any fraud alert from Staples side. :P
Grant,
With the amex deals you can make money and you get miles or points with your amex card purchase. What do you get with chime besides savings? Can you make money or get miles? What’s the deal with chime and why do you push it so much when it’s clearly not in the same league as amex.
You are right, the AMEX Offers are much better than the Chime Card offers. I mention the Chime Card offers since some of the best AMEX Offers are targeted to only a few people, whereas the Chime Card offers are always available to everyone with a Chime Card.
Grant,
Did you notice how Amex placed Level 3 data on the staples.com purchase? I had Visa 200 Gift card listed under each transaction on my Amex Account. at least we still got the credits…
Good catch Alex, I just checked and I see what you mean. I have this as the description below the Category:
VISA 200 GIFT CARD
SOUTHWESTGIFTCARD 100 EMAIL DELIVER
Yeah theres no way this level 3 data is not going to be eventually used to prohibit sign up bonus spend /amex offers etc. The sad journey to MS death I predict….. :(
I think only Staples.com has level 3 data. Have you seen any other merchants use level 3 data?
There’s a correction to the way the post phrases the use and cost of Level III authorization data. While it costs more for the merchant to collect Level III data (and store it), it actually costs Less per transaction to process the data by the credit card processor. This is because the additional data is used to reject fraudulent transactions at a higher success rate than Level 1 (name and number only) or Level 2 (name, number, plus postal billing code, and CVV).
When merchants send Level 3 data along with the request for authorization, the processor charges less to the merchant to clear that transaction (compared with sending only Level 1 or 2 data.) It’s a matter of fractions of percentage fees, but for high-volume processing (like Amazon) it can result in millions of dollars of additional processing charges to switch from lower to higher levels. For a small business by comparison, using 1 or 2, versus 3 would translate into a few hundred in extra fees per month – which is why your local restaurant probably sticks to Level 1 (swipe the card, verify the last 4-digits, and have you sign or authorize the transaction.)
But when you use a chip-enabled reader, the transaction now defaults to Level 3 processing (which is also why it takes a smidge longer to process – more data).
That’s also why a swiped card, costs less to process than a manually entered CC number (less chance of fraud theoretically with a physical card) And why when you have to manually enter a number on a website (versus using a pre-authenticated wallet – like Paypal or Google or ApplePay), you are being asked for more information.
It all comes down to how much it costs to run the card.
Thanks for sharing all that information. You clearly know quite a bit about Level 3 data, it all makes sense now.
I don’t have this offer on my any of my cards. Twitter or FB sync was so much better than these targeted offers
Targeted offers are either feast or famine. Sometimes you get the offer and sometimes not. Better luck next time Yeshu.
I agree, Grant. I’ll wait for the next offer. How’s life in the Bay area, by the way?
Life is going well. I’m in Santa Cruz today.
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AmEx “clawed back” 50k pts from me this month based on “cash equivalents” language. There goes that trip….
Dang, that sucks, I’m really sorry Dave.