Get £5 back on a £10 purchase via American Express ‘Shop Small’

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• Mark2 says:

  1 Dec1 December 16:51

  The travel agent in our town are on the list/map but have a big sign in the shop advising that they do not accept any credit cards.

  • Anna says:

    1 Dec1 December 17:41

    They won’t get much business from HFP readers.

    • Louie says:

      2 Dec2 December 01:00

      Can’t imagine they will get much business full stop. You would be mad to book a holiday without s75 protection.

      • Mr Dee says:

        2 Dec2 December 06:11

        hardly mad, wonder what percentage of people have claimed s75 protection in reality

      • RussellH says:

        2 Dec2 December 12:45

        Remember this has been the first year when travel agents and tour operators have been banned from charging card surcharges. Since previously just about everyone did levy surcharges, many customers in the past did not pay all their holiday cost by credit card.[1]

        The surcharge ban has hit some travel companies quite hard. It was often claimed at the beginning of the year that some companies on the tightest margins reckoned to make a significant part of their annual profit from the surcharges.

        Some firms have dealt with the problem by increasing prices across the board by around 2-3%, others have decided to stop accepting credit cards completely.

        However, if you are buying a holiday *package* from a UK operator, then you do not need S75 cover anyway. Problems only potentially arise if buying travel / car hire / accommodation etc. all separately from one another.

        And S75 does not help if you have paid with points anyway!

        [1] I used to reckon that about 30% of my customers paid the whole cost by credit card, the others paid by cheque, debit card or bank transfer, and I made it fairly clear that while the credit card surcharge covered most of the cost of taking the payment, it did not cover the full cost, but there were cheaper methods of payment available.
        Most customers though did pay their deposits by credit card, and I did not surcharge these payments. but at £60 a head this was not enough to give them S75 cover anyway.

      • Shoestring says:

        2 Dec2 December 13:00

        To get S75 cover, if the item costs over £100 it’s enough to pay £1 on credit card

      • RussellH says:

        2 Dec2 December 21:48

        Quite right – I keep forgetting that. I really should remember! Must be old age!

  • Sensible says:

    3 Dec3 December 18:02

    The shop small deal is only really useful if spending £10ish – would you genuinely spend that amount in your local travel agent?

    Indeed, who even uses travel agents these days?

• Jovanna says:

  1 Dec1 December 16:57

  I saw the Amex Small Shop logo behind the counter of the Hilton Garden Inn Heathrow last weekend. I’m sure it’s just marketing material.

  • Tariq says:

    1 Dec1 December 18:12

    Last year it triggered at the Moxy London Excel and Westfield Stratford Parking for me…!

• Chris says:

  1 Dec1 December 18:22

  I know one like that.
  Buy pint for £4.90 (it is London), pay £10 on Amex and get £5.10 change. Then £5 credit from Amex.

• GRIMZ says:

  1 Dec1 December 21:24

  A small amount of pubs! I have a lot of pubs in my area that take Amex, its easy to get a good night out for very little.expense especially with 13 cards registered.
  13 x £10 gift cards from my Butcher, 13 x £10 gift cards from my golf shop and 13 x £10 at the restaurant.
  Ask about buying £10 gift cards at the places you eat, drink and shop.

• Doogie says:

  1 Dec1 December 23:34

  Just back from a lovely dinner at my favourite restaurant, Number 16 in Glasgow. Explained about the offer to the owner (he hadn’t heard of it despite being on the map) and he was happy to split our bill and tip across 7 cards without contactless – it wasn’t till I got home that I remembered i had an 8th card I’d forgotten to take out tonight!

  • Genghis says:

    2 Dec2 December 07:37

    Nice. We found No16 last year and then in March flew to GLA and stayed one night just to return.

    • Doogie says:

      2 Dec2 December 08:47

      Excellent, it’s well worth visiting Glasgow for! 🙂

      • Shoestring says:

        2 Dec2 December 09:11

        I see The Ubiquitous Chip is on the Amex map as well – I used to be a very frequent customer as it was our company’s unofficial eatery – ie evening discussions with the boss, team get-togethers, a favourite place to take visitors. Brilliant eatery in the West End (Glasgow) http://www.ubiquitouschip.co.uk

      • Nathan says:

        2 Dec2 December 11:05

        Glasgow is well worth a visit for any foodie, especially seafood-ies, Cafe Gandolfi and a lobster and posh chips place out near where the lawyers hang out that I can’t remember the name of. Ubiquitous Chip for the wine list certainly, although I thought the food went through a quite ordinary phase a while back, haven’t returned in recent times as No. 16 is fab 👍

• C says:

  2 Dec2 December 07:45

  Went to a place on the map yesterday and paid with pin on 2 cards, but no email yet for either of us. Does this mean it hasn’t worked or should it show up in a few days? Hoping to hit up a few more places this week!

  Also used my wilko offer (got the snail straight away) but had to return the item so it never credited. Will I be safe using this offer again do you think?

  • Shoestring says:

    2 Dec2 December 07:55

    Did you pay contactless or stick in the card?

    No instant success email can be a worrying indication of no success – but this is not always the case. You basically have to waitup to 5 days to see if the statement credit has been applied.

    • C says:

      2 Dec2 December 08:04

      Put both cards in the machine and used pin having read the comments on here. I will give it a few days and see but would feel better if I’d have had an email!

      • Shoestring says:

        2 Dec2 December 08:09

        tbh then that would usually indicate no success is the likely outcome, not to worry if it turns out that way, if you have time you’d phone/ chat customer services & get them to manually apply the credits.

        Ie sounds like the map could be wrong (happens a lot).

  • Lottietiger says:

    2 Dec2 December 09:01

    For some reason all of mine went into spam so worth a look, I was worrying that zero had credited and for some reason thought ill have a look in spam and had 8 shop small e mails sitting there.

  • Alan says:

    2 Dec2 December 09:56

    Amex emails seem to be all over the shop just now. I received one saying to redeem my Amex offer before it expires, but I already redeemed it (and received the cash!) weeks ago!

    • RussellH says:

      2 Dec2 December 13:37

      Yes, Amex e-mails can be a complete mess. The worst seem to be the ones about MR points transfers, which always include HTML and style info in the supposedly plain text part!

      • Alan says:

        2 Dec2 December 13:44

        Was on the phone to them today and mentioned this – not expecting much but thought I may as well say! Also pointed out a few others that I’d triggered weeks ago but had now expired and nothing showing, they’re going to make sure both apply. Also highlighted again the bug in the app (on Android at least) that only shows bonus points rather than base earning MR/Avios – previously sent in screenshots and it’s with their tech team.

  • Rich says:

    2 Dec2 December 14:36

    Most places will refund to a different card, or for store credit, if you ‘forget’ the card you paid with.

• Chris says:

  2 Dec2 December 08:24

  Anyone thinking you’ll get manual credits from Amex, prepare your expectations.

  Last year I had around £300 of missing shop small credits – they gave me 5 of them as apparently that’s the limit for manual adjustment. And that’s on a Platinum account btw.

  • Shoestring says:

    2 Dec2 December 08:29

    They very grudgingly gave me mine (3) LY but sternly warned me that I must not ask for another manual credit adjustment for the next 6 months!

    • xcalx says:

      2 Dec2 December 13:12

      Plat + 5 supps last year didn’t work at one place. Agent told us each of the supps had to ring in to get the credit. Only took 1 call in previous years. They really made us jump through hoops last year. Not doing as many this year even though we sit on 16 Amex cards.

  • Louise says:

    2 Dec2 December 08:39

    Yes as I experienced, they said have to wait 90 days for them to appear and then query it

• Graham Walsh says:

  2 Dec2 December 09:36

  There is a good cafe round here, it’s on the map, but they haven’t taken any card payments for about a year. Maybe they got fed up with card transactions!! Big sign in the window Cash only. Big queues there all the time. Handy that they are next door a Lloyds Bank with cashpoint.

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