Amex Offer Dollar General
This morning American Express released another good Amex Offer. The offer gives a $5 statement credit after spending $25 or more in-store at Dollar General or Dollar General Market. While it isn’t as good as the some of the recent offers like Smart & Final, it still has some potential.
Before I show you which gift cards are available, lets take a look at how to register, the terms and my experience purchasing cards today.
How to register:
This offer was available on all of my cards via the “Offers for You” tab of the American Express website. As of now there isn’t a Twitter hashtag for it, however a few people have reported you can sync it via Facebook as well.
Update: You can now register for this offer via Twitter as well by tweeting #AmexDollarGen.
Terms:
Valid in-store only. Not valid on online purchases or phone orders. Offer valid at Dollar General and Dollar General Market stores. Valid at any participating location in the US. Enrollment limited. Must add offer to Card and use same Card to redeem. Limit 1 statement credit per American Express Card across all American Express offer channels. Statement credit will appear on your billing statement within 90 days after 8/31/15, provided that American Express receives information from the merchant about your qualifying purchase.
My Experience
I knew I was going to be in the area of a Dollar General Market, so I decided to stop in. First I was able to confirm that this particular store doesn’t allow credit cards to be used for the purchase of cash equivalents, but does allow credit cards for merchant gift cards.
The Dollar General I visited wasn’t in the best area and I get the feeling that it was more a store specific policy rather than a chain wide policy. Either way, I decided to test the offer by purchasing a $50 restaurant gift card that I know my family will use. When I got to the register I was able to succesfully charge $25 to one card and $25 to the second card by splitting the transaction.
Within five minutes of walking out of the store, I received the “Congratulations” email confirming that the offer had worked. I had just received 20% off of the face value of the gift card purchased. Everything worked exactly as it should have!
Cards Available
The store I visited had two gift card racks. I am posting photos of all of the gift cards being sold, but here are the highlights:
- $25 Vanilla Visa with a $3.95 fee
- $50 Vanilla Visa with a $4.95 fee
- Variable Vanilla Visas (up to $500) with a $4.95 fee
- $25 Shell Gift Cards
- Variable load Amazon gift cards (up to $500)
- $50 BP Gift Cards
The store does also carry Greendot Money Paks and Vanilla Reloads, but it is my understanding that the registers are hard coded against accepting credit cards for payments.
Good Strategy
I wasn’t able to confirm how many cards can be used to pay in a certain transaction (the cashier had never done more than 2), but the best way to maximize would be to use as many cards to pay. For example, if a store would allow you to purchase a $500 One Vanilla Visa with lets say 10 cards, then you would make $45.05 on the purchase after the $4.95 fee. If for some reason you could split it 20 ways, then you would make $95.
Of course there is a lot of opportunity with merchant gift cards as well. There were variable load cards from Amazon, Home Depot and other merchants that could be loaded and paid for with a lesser amount of cards. As always, finding a merchant you frequent anyway is a great strategy, since you basically get 20% off.
Gift Card Photos
Now here is what you are waiting for, the photos. Please feel free to leave your experiences in the comments! Happy saving.
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Can i buy a 1000$ vanilla gift card ? I heard there is a maximum amount of which you can spend on gift card which is 500$
They do not have $1000 cards at Dollar General
How do you reload the reusable and reloadable gift cards from dollar general.
[…] General sells a variety of gift cards for many merchants. Miles to Memories has a sampling of which gift cards are available for purchase at Dollar General from the last time this deal was run. Dollar General also […]
Dollar General does not take American Express in Alabama. Any online ideas, if valid?
I was also told no CC for GCs unless it was a specified amount GC like the $25 shell. Variable Amazon was not allowed.
Was able to split 5 Amex cards for 1 Paypal loadable. Got 1 email confirm but awaiting the others, Awaiting positive confirm from next statement. before following up since good through August. Surprisingly though, register appeared hard coded to prevent further transactions after SO and I, in separate transactions, each got a $500 card. I confirmed with CC provider that there was no suspicious activity and credit limit wasn’t reached. Plus I had already set cash adv. limit to 0 to be safe, so list of reasons are shrinking.
Anyone heard of velocity limits at DG like Kate?
[…] restaurant gift cards. Here’s a list of some interesting gift cards they carry, taken from MilesToMemories (who also posted photos as […]
Saw reports of GD don’t accept CCs for GCs. Would like to see an update.
YMMV, for me, at one GD they said only cash for buying GCs. At another, I could buy two $25 Shell GCs using my Amex – they said cash only for Vanilla/visa/MC GCs.
I only had this offer on 1 of 3 cards. Bummer!
Amex Sync w/ Twitter and then tweet #AmexDollarGen to register all of your amex cards.
Try Amex twitter sync, with tag #AmexDollarGen
I personally wouldn’t do more than 2 or 3 cards when it comes to splitting it for the Visa/MC/Amex giftcards only because I don’t want to arouse suspicion. I get the evil eye already going through the grocery store even though the GS prob makes a small tidy profit for me to swipe my card to MS.
2 generally is understandable. Often they’ll start asking to see your cards once you start doing multiple transactions.