Last week I wrote a post titled “Purchase Many Gift Cards at 25% Off” where I said you could take advantage of the Staples.com Amex Offer and get a $25 statement credit on a $100 gift card purchase. This ultimately means a 25% discount on the gift card of your choice since Staples sells many gift cards for other stores online. While this Staples.com Amex Offer is targeted and only available through your AmericanExpress.com account, if you do the multiple browser trick you should be able to register all eligible credit cards (related post).
While I was confident purchasing another merchants gift card would trigger the statement credit, I got a good amount of back lash in the comments section that there was no way it would work. The terms specifically state “Physical and electronic gift card purchases are not included.” While I hadn’t yet personally taken advantage of the offer at that time, I’ve taken advantage of similar offers which included the same terms and have never had trouble with receiving the statement credit. American Express doesn’t see what is actually purchased, they just see the total amount of the purchase from the participating merchant. So as long as the gift card is sold from Staples.com and not a third-party vendor, you are good to go.
Well, since there was much belief and readers thinking I was posting false information, I am here to prove to you that it does work. On January 14 I went ahead and purchased a $100 Home Depot eGift card. I immediately received the “Congrats! You just used your Amex Offer” email. That same day I received a call from Staples asking to verify the email address the eGift card should be sent to. The $100 charge then sat in my account as a “pending charge” for a few days and finally hit my account on January 16 (although it has a purchase date of January 15). On January 18 the $25 statement credit hit my account, although it has a date of January 17.
Above is a screen shot of my American Express account showing the $100 charge and $25 statement credit. So here is my personal proof to you that purchasing gift cards for other merchants at Staples.com will trigger the statement credit as long as you a) registered for the offer, b) use the registered American Express credit card, and c) spend $100.
One thing to note though is that I have not yet read any reports of a $100 Staples gift card purchase working (or not working), so I cannot verify that just yet. I have read reports that a $100 Visa gift card has worked (based on blog reader comments).
Remember, eGift cards are free and physical gift cards come with a $1.99 fee per gift card. Also, based on the transaction dates make sure to place your order a few days prior to this offer expiring (February 7, 2015) since you want to ensure it hits your account in time.
You can check out this previous post that lists all of the gift cards that are sold at Staples.com and well as this original post detailing out the offer.
What gift card did you purchase?! Enjoy!
The post Confirmed! Saving 25% off on Gift Cards Works with Amex Offers! appeared first on Deals We Like.