(Hat Tip to Shawn @ Frequent Miler)
Good evening everyone, I know I am super late to the party, but better late than never. This morning, AMEX released a few new AMEX Offers and there was 1 in particular that got a massive amount of attention. There is a Smart & Final offer where you can get a $25 statement credit after spending $50+. You can get the offer 3 times per enrolled AMEX card!
After work, I went home, grabbed my 6 enrolled AMEX cards and drove to my local Smart & Final. It was my first time in the store and the only Smart & Final within 20+ miles.
Here are some pics of the gift card rack at my local Smart & Final store. There are Visa, MasterCard, and AMEX Gift Cards in $100 denominations. They also have a few other retailers, similar to the gift card rack at most grocery stores.
I need to book a Southwest Airlines flight soon, so I grabbed a few Southwest Airlines Gift Cards and made my way to the cashier. My dreams crashed to the ground when he told me I couldn’t pay for any gift cards with credit cards – cash or debit cards only. I found that really hard to believe, so I asked why. He told me that his manager would not let him accept credit cards for gift card purchases. I think this is a store-specific issue since many people on Twitter have told me that they were able to buy gift cards with credit cards and even do split tender on the $100 Visa/MasterCard/AMEX Gift Cards. I walked out of the store empty handed, but I will try again at a different store. I am 90% sure the next store will be more credit card friendly, but if not, I still have until June 30 to find a helpful Smart & Final.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Have a great evening everyone!
Same thing happened to me. I drove to another store and had no issues though. YMMV
That is reassuring, I was so annoyed tonight, that I was tempted to drive 25+ miles to the next store. Gahhh
Which S&F store was this?
Pleasant Hill (I’m never going back to that store again).
Is there a link of how i can register. what are the steps.
You can try to add the offer to your Amex account by logging into your Amex account and clucking on offers for you.
How to do sign up?can i have the direct link.
I just got 1200 worth visa each 100 with split tender no issue,
Nice job. You cleaned up!
I had no problem at my store either but the cashier did tell me she was overwhelmed with syncers. She said a whole bunch of gift cards and visa m/c cards were sold. She was friendly but you could tell this may not sit well with management. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had enough of the gift card buyers at your store (and possibly others) and said no more. In other words, we know why you are in here. Now go buy $50 worth of food,etc like the promo was intended. Who ever said we were normal?
I also wonder if denying the use of a CC for store gift cards is a violation of a vendor contract retail stores have with those cards/companies. If I were the bank issuing those store gift cards or the restaurants, etc, I would be pretty pissed if CCs were allowed by right and then a customer willing to buy them was told no.
Yes, very true. I’ll just visit a different store in Oakland which is close to Bart.
I guess I won’t bother wasting my time stopping by that store…I suggest you stop by Mariscos La Costa on your walk down to S&F from Fruitvale, it’s right on the way on International(@ 37th Ave.)
I’m gunna try Dublin before Fruitvale. Hopefully it will still be alive by Monday
I didn’t get that impression at my store. It sounded like he got in trouble before for selling gift cards with bad credit cards.
Did not Management work out this offering with AMEX?
Apparently this is Smart & Final’s first AMEX Offer (and probably last offer too)
Same thing happened to me at Pleasant Hill. Went to the Pleasanton and Hayward instead.
Good luck at Pleasanton and Hayward? What was your strategy?
I bought $100 amex gc’s in separate transactions. I think $200 or $300 triggers a manager override. They’ll probably want a manager to confirm the transaction anyways. 3x$100 with 6 cards at each store. I guess you could probably do all $900 (3x$50 on each your cards) in one go at one store but I didn’t want to hold up the line. There plenty of Smart & Final’s around anyways.
Plenty of gift cards too, lots of $100vgc/mcgc/agc, shell or arco $50, southwest etc… I doubt they’ll run out any time gc’s anytime soon.
Thanks for the update. Plenty of GCs at my stores (probably since they won’t allow CCs). I got a tip for another store to try.
If it doesn’t work out, I guess you could always buy food. :)
A couple of years ago, my primary local East Coast supermarket (Shoprite) did an AMEX promo where you got 20% off. I thought about buying gift cards, but I realized it was better to just buy store gift cards and get the discount off of food I would have bought anyway.
Of course, this was before I started “collecting” AMEX cards to take advantage of all these AMEX offers (particularly Small Business Saturday). These days, I wouldn’t need enough food and would want to also buy gift cards for other stores.
If you normally shop at S&F, you should just buy many S&F GCs. Half off everything in the future.
Just after reading your Post at around 10.20 AM local time i took an early lunch break and went to Smart & Final and cleared out the inventory of 6 $100 VISA Cards split tendered to 2 AMEX Cards for each $100 transaction. Made sure they were not tampered with. (so important). If there were any $200, $300 cards sold by Smart & Final, i didn’t see those denominations. An elderly gentleman thinking i was the only person came in my line but i had already started my swipes. Got really frustated. Got an email for using my AMEX offers for all the credit cards * 3. Now hopefully the credits post. Can’t wait to hug my wife tonight and go through her wallet and extract her AMEX cards and do the same thing. :).
I’m glad you had an easy and productive trip to S&F.
Sigh.
If you are going to do GCs/split tenders in multiple transactions, ask them to close the register so somebody doesn’t unload a cart full of groceries and then gets pissed off by the pissant buying GCs and wasting everyone’s time. Many people get pissed off when somebody writes a check these days….imagine how frustrating it is when some twat does 6 split payment transactions!
FWIW, my local SWs allow a maximum of two transactions per visit. That’s a reasonable number for everyone to remember. If you can’t get it done in two, get out of line and don’t be a DB about it.
One of my pet peeves about this hobby is people who do stuff like that.
I agree. I do my best to be considerate and go fast. Just image what the person behind you is thinking…
I don’t know if I can ask it off, I did not understand what you did at the store. Did you buy 6 $100 VISA gift cards which means splitting the $600 between your 2 AMEX cards for $300 each? I am sorry if hurt you asking this.
and oh yeaah forgot to thank Mr Grant Thomas :) Thanks Man.
You’re welcome!
If you’re ever back in Irvine, Grant, the one on culver had tons of Amazon GC’s (I got some of those). I also went to one in Santa Ana, where there was the huge giftcardmall rack and VGC’s $100 . Neither store gave me issue
Good ol Orange County. I miss that place.
I’ve lived in Bay Area before (berkeley) as well as OC now. Theyre both great places, I likewise kind of miss the Bay Area sometimes! Good thing it’s just over an hr flight away ….!
Both are great, no doubt about that.
I’m going to start calling this the mother of all AMEX sync deals. I’ve got 15 amex cards I can use this with, for 3 transactions per card, totaling 45 transactions in all. I’ll probably sprinkle those around various gift cards as well as the $100 visas if I can find them. Total haul should be over $1,100 in free money. I love this hobby. I’m sure there will be others who make out even better than I do.
I’m sure there are. Nice $1000 of profit you got there. I feel like this deal is going to die soon, so better get in now if you can.
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My wife was able to buy 3 visa 100$ cards from same Pleasant Hill store. Looks like Amex sent them a memo about the promotion and allowing credit for GC sales. She was shown a memo by one of the counter clerk. She also got Gas, Food GCs and we will return for more.
This is absolutely wonderful free $900(have 12 cards).
Dang, that is the store I went to. When did she go? I went the day the Amex Offer came out and they said no credit cards for GC purchases.
She went yesterday(17) and I am following you on the blog. She knew about the challenge and decided to try anyhow.
If you have more cards to use, you can visit the store and talk about memo(if they refuse)
Il call them first so I don’t get burned again.
Keep us posted!
I live in the South Bay and went to my local S&F and bought $300 worth of gift cards, went back 3 days later and was told you can not buy gift cards with a credit card! WTF!
Which city did you go to? I’ve run into similar issues with S&F.
Final update: Completed offers on all my cards(Free 900$). I was able to buy 100$ GCs(both Visa & Master Card), Gas GCs with multiple swipes.
You can go to Pleasant Hill without any doubt.
Awesome, I’ll do that Monday night after work. Do you remember the name of the cashier or manager you spoke with? Lots of GCs left for me?
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I don’t remember the names(worked with 3 cashiers over 2 days) and didn’t need manager intervention at all. Visa 100$ are not there but Master Cards are still available(as of yesterday afternoon),
Awesome. I’m totally going tonight. I’ll let you know how it goes.
How long does it typically take for the credit to post?
2-3 business days from the day the charge was made.
Anyone have experienced with buying giftcards with Amex at their Phoenix locations?
No but it should not be a problem. Most S&F stores know the gift card deal.
Do you have any update up phoenix stores? I’m planing to fly in next week to PHX any thing i should know beforehand?
You should be good. The cashiers are well aware of the Amex offer at this point.
Thanks i actually flew down to phx to do this promo i had over 60 cards it worked fine no amex problems (i called in before), split transactions worked like a charm, some stores check ID
Limited to 3(x) $50 transaction with $25 credit ACROSS ALL AMEX ACCOUNT, so how do you get more than $75 credit statement?
The limit is per enrolled card, not per individual Amex account. You can get 3 $25 statement credits for each enrolled Amex card.
Well, for a family of 4 we need lots of groceries. No need to buy cards, just straight up groceries. For 3 cards it would a total savings of $225 until the end of the promotion!
Great deal :)
During this morning shopping trip to S&F, I asked the Santa Ana store cashier if they accepted CCs for gift cards (Visa & MC). He said so long as your ID matches your CC you can shop away for GCs. I didn’t ask him about the split tender though – maybe during the nexr shopping trip!
S&F has definitely loosened up their shopping restrictions.
Split tender was also successfully done this morning using two AMEX cards, twice. Already received the AMEX confirmation email for the $25 discount each. Bought (4) $50 major department store GCs as we are planning above-the-range microwave oven & vent purchase (currently retailed at ~$480 including delivery & installation). Two more of the same GCs in the planning. We are holding off until the 4th of July sale and that will place our purchase at better 50% off the sale price.
Will report on the final savings when we pull the trigger!
Thanks for the update. Glad you scored some more gift cards and I’m sure you will be able to find some great deals during the 4th of July holiday weekend.
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