Hit your credit card sign-up bonus by buying fee-free American Express gift cards

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• Andy says:

  13 Feb13 February 09:49

  Took a couple of weeks to transfer to my bank account when I did this with four of them at the start of january (cards that I had purchased using the argos spend £50/get £25 bak promo before xmas).

• RIccati says:

  13 Feb13 February 09:53

  Call the hotel and ask them to charge! Simples.

  • xcalx says:

    13 Feb13 February 09:58

    Not sure how that would work as the Hotel Voucher was issued by Orbitz.

    • Rochelle says:

      13 Feb13 February 11:52

      The charge went through on my account a few days after my prepaid hotel stay when I did the £50 back for £250 spend back in December.
      Still haven’t received the credit – they said it could take up to 90 days.
      Hope that helps.

• stuart says:

  13 Feb13 February 09:59

  morning all, just wondering….
  if you hit your bonus using the gift cards and then later request a refund will amex try to take back the bonus points or indeed your 2 for 1 voucher….
  same question applies for a refundable hotel/airline booking

  • Rob says:

    13 Feb13 February 10:50

    They don’t take away your 2-4-1.

    They DO take away your sign-up bonus if you refund the transaction that takes you over the spend target because the bonus is ‘attached’ to the transaction as you see from your MR statement. If need to spend £3000 you should therefore book a £2990 flight and then spend £10 in Tesco – the bonus is ‘attached’ to the Tesco spend and should remain intact when you refund the flight.

    Aternatively, move the points out ASAP before the refund hits. However, I would NOT cancel an Amex card with a negative points balance as you risk them putting a flag on your account and not allowing future applications.

    • Paul says:

      13 Feb13 February 21:22

      It wasn’t a sign up bonus admittedly it was 5000 bonus MR points for spending a couple of thousand in 3 months or something.
      Anyway, It posted with a charge for a hotel stay that took me over the threshold. A refund for something else came off a few days later and the bonus was removed. Was posted again once I had used the card enough to cross the threshold again.

    • James says:

      16 Feb16 February 15:09

      Hi Raffles,

      You mention above that if you make a transaction that takes you close to your target, followed by another smaller transaction that takes you over it that the refund of the first transaction wouldn’t result in the bonus being taken back.

      Can you clarify if this is the case for an initial spend bonus, the BA 4for1 or both?

      I am looking to trigger a second BA 2for1 to use before the devaluation and I’m not going to get there without a trick like this so if you can confirm that would help me a great deal.

      Thanks in advance.

      James

      • Rob says:

        16 Feb16 February 21:21

        BA vouchers are NEVER taken back. I don’t think it is technically possible. It is, of course, very easy for Amex to take back Membership Rewards points on Gold and Plat accounts though, that is the difference.

• JamesWag says:

  13 Feb13 February 10:00

  Can these be used to pay off a balance on another credit card ?

  • mark2 says:

    13 Feb13 February 10:07

    Ask yourself: will the other credit card company want to pay commission to American Express?

  • Rob says:

    13 Feb13 February 10:47

    No

• danksy says:

  13 Feb13 February 10:06

  I wonder how quick you can cash them out? This could earn quite a few Avios; especially if I can churn £10k a couple of times!

  • Scott Nelson says:

    13 Feb13 February 10:19

    Looks like Amex will want to refund to your purchase card not bank transfer.

    You could ‘gift’ them to a ‘partner’. Get your partner to cash out.

    All seems a bit dodgy/ risky for the sake of a few thousand MR points.

  • RIccati says:

    14 Feb14 February 11:17

    There are internal limits on how many of these gift cards you can buy per X calendar days.

    Every order is reviewed manually and could be rejected.

    They do have the facility to refund unused gift cards to a bank account but the default choice is back to the card you paid with. Some people report they were asked for ‘a formal request’ (in writing).

    • Rob says:

      14 Feb14 February 18:02

      …. whilst the T&C’s do say it is paid into your account as the default choice!

      • Alan says:

        15 Feb15 February 00:20

        I bought some before Christmas and eventually got them refunded to my bank account, but it took multiple phone calls (with the final one taking ages with an agent that was actually willing to do it) and a three week wait for payment. The folk that run Amex gift cards aren’t the usual Amex CS folk in Brighton and are nowhere near as switched on/helpful IME. It was worth it for an extra £500 towards my AA spend target but wouldn’t be rushing to do it again.

• mark2 says:

  13 Feb13 February 10:20

  When I have bought Amex gift cards to use up ‘£10 off when you spend £100’ vouchers and get the CC points at Tesco the £50 vouchers are a bit awkward to spend in shops as many are not keen on taking more than one card. I see that on this offer you can buy £100 cards which are more useful at the supermarket. They are accepted without question at Tesco, Morrisons and Waitrose but not at Sainsburys yesterday.

• shadowfixer says:

  13 Feb13 February 10:52

  I tried using amex gift cards last year to buy amazon vouchers… didnt work. it seems that you cant use gift cards to buy gift cards

  unless i am going wrong somewhere?

  • mark2 says:

    13 Feb13 February 11:12

    I did this successfully last week.

    • shadowfixer says:

      13 Feb13 February 13:39

      fair enough – ill have another go!

      • The_Real_A says:

        13 Feb13 February 22:04

        I’m not sure how you present them in store – but you should call them credit cards and have the cashier process them as such. Simply says its a special card and doesn’t have a chip and pin so needs to be swiped.

        Most stores now have policies that their own gift cards cannot be used to buy branded gift cards in-store and the cashiers get confused.

• Rob says:

  13 Feb13 February 10:58

  Just 2 quick questions:

  1. Can you use these gift cards to buy other gift cards (3v) in Tesco?

  2. Can you use a mixture of cash and the gift cards to complete a transaction in store? I’m assuming this is possible as i do this with Sainsbury’s gift cards.

  • mark2 says:

    13 Feb13 February 11:12

    1. No; tried it
    2. yes usually, except as in 1.

    • callum says:

      13 Feb13 February 11:24

      I hardly see how the cashier would even know you’re using a gift card – unless these aren’t chip and PIN?

      • mark2 says:

        13 Feb13 February 11:29

        They aren’t chip and PIN. The POS accepts them for normal goods but not for gift cards (there is a different number series for each type of Amex cards).
        But it is worth another try!

        • M says:

          13 Feb13 February 12:22

          It works. Depending on the store.

        • The_Real_A says:

          13 Feb13 February 22:15

          Mark – have you actually experienced this yourself? Which store was this?

          If you have then i will stand corrected – but I believe people have problems because the cashier presses the “gift card” button on the POS which relates to their own gift-cards or love2shop type cards. Or the cashier intervenes before the transaction is processed.

        • mark2 says:

          13 Feb13 February 22:35

          I just swiped it like a credit card without chip. The message was something like ‘Alternative Tender Required’.
          This was in Redditch; some says that it worked elsewhere and I can believe that if the till or till software is a different version.

        • The_Real_A says:

          13 Feb13 February 22:49

          Interesting. I understand the only difference in software is the self serv which run off the Express system. (or the odd trial here and there). Might have to do some trial runs of something i wanted to do in that case 🙂 thanks!

    • Polly says:

      13 Feb13 February 13:28

      You might as well just pay for them directly with your amex card in that case!

      • M says:

        13 Feb13 February 14:00

        Yes, but wouldn’t earn me points/fuel for buying?

        • Polly says:

          13 Feb13 February 14:19

          Think I meant buying other gift cards in store. Using your amex to pay plus club card to double dip. Great to be able to order amex cards fee free on line though to hit a bonus, but if you are just buying normal available gift cards, then just buy and get all the points in store directly. Just waiting for those 3 v or pay.com cards to return now!

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