Amex’s Christmas promotions unwrapped

Yesterday I ran a post about earning double Avios when you shop at Sainsbury’s. Amex is (if you register via the link I gave) offering double Membership Rewards points on all purchases until 31 December.

If you have a BA Amex, you will have had an email from Amex yesterday with links to various other shopping promotions. It was all a bit confusing, though, so I have ploughed through it all and picked out what I consider to be the most interesting bits.

This link (deleted as now dead) shows the shopping deals available with a British Airways American Express. Annoyingly, you need to register your card for the double Avios deals, otherwise you will not receive the double points. You are looking at:

Cash discounts at Hobbs, White Company, Urban Outfitters, Kurt Geiger, Aquascutum, Aspinal, Anthropologie, Heals, Furniture Village, World Duty Free, Heathrow Express (no better than the usual 10% though), Radisson Blu hotels, Millennium Hotels

Double Avios at Nike Store, House of Fraser, Monsoon, Accessorize, Boodles, Hackett, Fenwick, Kiddicare, Carphone Warehouse, thetrainline.com

20% off gift cards for Waterstone’s and HMV.

The latter two deals are especially interesting if you were planning to buy a Kindle, an ipad or any similar bit of kit this Christmas. Waterstone’s now sells Kindles, and HMV sells ipads and various other tablets (see their website).

It is very difficult to get a discount on an ipad – even at Heathrow you only save about 5%. The chance to get 20% off by buying a huge pile of HMV giftcards is tempting.

This would also be a decent way of laundering some cash through any Amex card where you were trying to meet a minimum spend requirement. Buy HMV gift cards or evouchers at a 20% discount, buy some ipads and sell them on ebay – at the very worst, you would come out quits as they should sell easily for a 10% discount. You then pay ebay, postage and Paypal fees.

This is obviously a very advanced game, however, and you should be 100% certain of what you are doing before you try it.

Meanwhile ….

Over at this link is the full list of offers available to holders of American Express Platinum, Preferred Rewards Gold and Green charge cards.

Most of the offers are the same as for the BA cards. The main additions are:

• The Sainsbury’s promotion we discussed yesterday
• A Virgin Atlantic deal that I will post separately so that it is seen by Virgin flyers who may have passed this thread by
• Double MR points at Argos, Morrison’s Cellar and Co-Op Food stores
• 20% off a 3-day Hertz rental

Click on the link above if you want to know more.