American Express Offers, more commonly referred to Amex Offers are a great way to save money or earn extra Membership Rewards points. These offers are essentially coupons that you add to your American Express card. When you make a qualifying purchase the coupon is automatically applied to your purchase.
In most cases these offers are fairly straight forward, spend $200 with a certain brand and receive a $50 statement credit off of your purchase. Another common offer is to spend a certain number of dollars to earn a bunch of bonus Membership Rewards points. What I love most about Amex offers are that they’re free and easy to use.
Adding American Express Offers To Your Card
There’s really only one tricky thing you have to do when using American Express offers and it’s not even that tricky. All you need to do is add each offer to your card. If you think there is the slightest possibility that you may use the offer I’d recommend adding it to your card as there is no limit and no penalty when doing so.
Adding offers to your American Express card is extremely simple. If using the desktop version website simply scroll down on your home dashboard page. Below your “recent transactions” you’ll find another pane titled “Amex Offers & Benefits.” Within that pane begin scrolling through your Amex Offers. Most of the time these offers are available to all cardholders. Occasionally you may find targeted offers only available to select cardholders.
Either way when you see an offer that interests you add it to your card. I add nearly all offers to my card because I’d hate to miss a bonus just because I forgot to click a button.
You’ll automatically receive a statement credit after completing the terms of the offer. In the above example if you spend $300 with Omni Hotels you’ll automatically receive a statement credit of $60 shortly after making your purchase.
My First American Express Offers Mistake
Now, at face value these American Express Offers are easy to capitalize on. However, I’m apparently inept and have failed to complete the qualifying purchase not one, but two times. The first time was a simple enough mistake.
No, I didn’t let the Amex Offer expire, that would be too easy. Instead I purchased a new pair of shoes (that I needed anyway) and threw in a pair of shoe laces to get the order just over $200. Amex charges take about 2 days to post and I waited. Then the charges finally posted and I’d received a “tax adjustment” of $2 which brought the order total to just $199.80. I’m not kidding… So that purchase didn’t qualify for the Amex Offer and I didn’t receive the bonus points I was going for.
My Second American Express Offers Mistake
My second American Express Offer mistake was equally hilarious. This offer was to earn 10,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $300 on airfare through Amex Travel. Typically there’s no way I would have qualified for this offer, but I had an ace up my sleeve. I had to buy a plane ticket to visit my family in California. Round trip flights were just under $300 so I volunteered to book for myself and my sister.
Since I was booking for two people my combined purchase should have been over the $300 threshold. For my purchase I expected to earn 10,000 and make life easier for a sibling, how great is that? Instead, American Express again gave me a slap in the face. When the charges finally posted the tickets purchased as two separate transactions! That is, they posted as two separate $289.00 transactions. Since neither transaction exceeded the $300 threshold I did not receive the 10,000 Membership Rewards bonus. Bummer.
Final Thoughts
American Express Offers are one of my favorite benefits I receive from my American Express Platinum card. Offers update frequently and offer are for things that I’d purchase anyway. For example, there is currently an offer to earn 15% back on all Starbucks purchases (capped at $5), then there is another offer to earn 10% back on all Starbucks purchases (capped at $5). In total, that’s $10 you could get back all thanks to your coffee habit.
There are typically offers for hotels, airline, and frequently retail brands. I don’t always get to use all of my Amex Offers, but I always check to see if there’s an offer on something I need to purchase anyway. Usually these offers are extremely straightforward and easy to use, however I’ve run into two notable situations in the past year that I didn’t complete the offer due to technicalities. Hopefully you’ll learn from these mistakes and avoid these pitfalls when you sign up for Amex Offers and try to complete the required spending thresholds.
