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Has ‘£5 back on a £20 Amazon purchase’ appeared on your American Express accounts?

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American Express and Amazon have launched another of their occasional offers.  And it is a generous one.

If you are targeted, you will receive £5 cashback on your next £20+ purchase on Amazon made with your American Express card.

To see if you are targeted, you need to log into your online American Express account and look at the offers tab for EACH card you have.  You should also look under any supplementary cards which you have registered.

If you see the Amazon offer, click ‘Save To Card’.  The offer is “only” valid for the first 74,000 people who save it.

We have the offer on:

  • my Platinum
  • my wife’s supplementary Platinum
  • my wife’s Gold

I do not have it on:

  • my BA Premium Plus
  • my Starwood Amex
  • my wife’s Starwood Amex (which now has no offers at all)
  • my wife’s BA Premium Plus

…. which means £15 of free money for us.

Here are the official rules, but it may not work this way in practice:

  • Offer intended for UK Cardmembers only.
  • Offer only available online
  • Offer only applies to spend made in Great British Pound (GBP) on the Card to which the offer is saved, including an American Express Card loaded into a mobile payment wallet.
  • Offer does not apply to spend on other Cards you might hold and is not valid for transactions made using Payment Aggregators.
  • Only one £5 statement credit per UK Card.
  • Rewarded credit may be reversed if qualifying transaction is refunded or cancelled.
  • Offer only available to the first 74,000 Cardmembers who save the offer to their Card.
  • Credit should appear on your billing statement within 5 days from qualifying spend but may take up to 90 days from 9 December 2018.
  • Offer not valid on orders paid on finance.
  • Offer is only intended for the targeted recipient of this offer.
  • Spend must be billed to your Card account by 9 December 2018 to be eligible for this offer. If Amazon does not charge your Card during this period, e.g. because of a delay in dispatching your goods, you may not be eligible for this offer.
  • Offer not valid on purchases made with Amazon Prime or subscriptions to Amazon Prime.
  • Offer only valid on orders delivered to the UK.

I am unsure about the ‘not valid on purchases made with Amazon Prime’ rule.  I don’t know how American Express can tell the difference.  That said, for 100% security you may want to have it delivered normally instead.

Do gift card purchases work?

The easiest way of triggering the bonus should be to purchase a £20 e-gift card, emailed to yourself and then applied to your account.

It should also work if you top-up your Amazon account with £20 of credit.  Topping up your account means that you end up with a £20 balance at Amazon and, next time you buy something, the £20 is used first before your credit card is charged for the balance.

I ordered a £20 e-gift card for myself and it appeared to work.  I got an immediate confirmation from American Express that I had triggered the offer ‘if your transaction meets the offer terms’.  I should know in a few days if the £5 credit will be applied and will report back.

You can buy an e-gift card for yourself, or top up your balance, via this page.

The Amazon home page is here.

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

18,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

1% cashback uncapped* on all your business spending (T&C apply) Read our full review

Category

American Express Gold card, American Express Platinum card, British Airways and Avios, Marriott Bonvoy

Comments (163)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Alex Sm says:
    10 Oct10 October 11:00

    Not OT but out of curiosity – how small is HFP commission from Amazon? Just in terms of ballpark %% figure? I always click through HFP when I need to get to Amazon (as a sign of appreciation for the free and useful content here) and just became curious about the commission.

    • Rob says:
      10 Oct10 October 11:35

      Goes from 1% on “Home Entertainment, Smartphones and Mobile Phones” through to 10% on “Apparel, Shoes, Jewelry, Watches, Luggage, Amazon Fashion Women, Men and Kids Private Label”. The most common categories are 5% – “Home, Furniture, Books, Kindle eBooks, Music, Musical Instruments, Kitchen, Toys, Home improvement, DVD and Blu-Ray, Software, Beer Wine & Spirits, Digital Video Games, Business Industrial & Scientific Products”. All ex-VAT so effectively reduce the commission by 1/6th to reflect that.

  • John Sharples says:
    10 Oct10 October 11:17

    If you top up £40, amazon also credit you with an additional £5. This also seemingly triggers the £5 Amex statement credit. So £45 of amazon credit for £35 outlay.

  • Pierre says:
    10 Oct10 October 12:51

    Not on any of my Amexes either

  • Sandra says:
    10 Oct10 October 13:36

    It showed up on my BA Amex yesterday and let me save it so from that I assume they hadn’t reached 74,000 people. I’ve not tried to use it yet as theres nothing I want at the moment.

  • kk says:
    10 Oct10 October 14:47

    OT: Did the fee to redeposit Avios change for OW flighx on BA? I seem to recall it being £17.50 for a single leg, but now the main BA table of fees just states £35 as the redeposit fee. The FT thread also mention £35 (although they don’t go into a discussion of OW vs RT so maybe it’s still charged at 17.50 for each leg?)
    Thanks.
    K.

    • Rob says:
      10 Oct10 October 15:53

      It’s £35 BUT capped at what you actually paid, so capped at £17.50 for a one-way Reward Flight Saver ticket.

      • kk says:
        10 Oct10 October 16:01

        Thank you! You mention “capped what you actually paid”.
        Does this mean that the charge could be more than £17.50 if my original payment was greater? (i.e. I did money + Avios on the original OW booking)

        • Rob says:
          10 Oct10 October 16:02

          No, it is capped at what you paid or £17.50, whichever is lower.

          Interesting one if you did ‘Avios and Money’ – in your case, perhaps you will have to pay the full £35. Let me know as this would be worth writing about if you were hit.

        • kk says:
          10 Oct10 October 18:57

          No, unfortunately it was merely a question for a future provisional booking which doesn’t provide useful immediate material. Normally I pay partially with money – there is a price point in there that allows me to “buy” them for circa 0.9p per Avios (which is just about worth it for me personally).
          I vaguely recall that about 3 or 4 years ago I was getting everything except the £17.50 refunded, but as the memory gets hazy with these things and rules periodically updated, just wanted to double-check.

  • Andy says:
    10 Oct10 October 14:51

    OT – I’m considering getting the Amex Platinum card. Usually when I get an Amex card I apply for a supplementary card for my wife at the same time. However I think I read here (but maybe wrong) that the optimum strategy is to apply for the card, then apply for the supplementary card once you get the platinum card as there is an additional bonus for adding the card? Or am I totally wrong?

    • BJ says:
      10 Oct10 October 15:19

      Yes, wait until you have your card first and then apply later from within your account. You should get 5k bonus but it’s not guaranteed.

  • jonathan brown says:
    10 Oct10 October 15:04

    Has anyone bought a £100 Selfridges giftcard and been given the £30 rebate?

  • Peter K says:
    10 Oct10 October 16:54

    Hi Rob,

    Tried to apply for the Amazon business account for Mrs K via the HfP link but need to verify the business. I have been asked for the following:

    1) One of the following official documents containing the business name :

    — Excerpt of the trade registry where your business is registered
    — Official document that contains your valid/active VAT
    — Business licence
    — Professional licence
    AND
    2) A document from your business confirming employment for [OWNER]. If possible, print it on company letterhead.

    This seems to rule out non-limited companies or those who are not VAT registered. Have I missed something here as it seems to rule out many smaller/new businesses as we cannot provide either.

    • Rob says:
      10 Oct10 October 17:52

      The document thing is a pain, we get asked for this occasionally but HFP has no headed paper as we never write to anyone!

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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