Sam’s Club Amex Offer Gift Cards to Purchase
Yesterday I covered in detail a new targeted Sam’s Club Amex Offer found on select business credit and charge cards. You can find the full details in that post, but basically if you have the offer you can get 20% back on up to $1,250 in spend for a maximum of $250 in cash back. I had the offer on several cards, specifically on SPG Business and Business Platinum cards. (Including employee cards.)
Since gift cards are not excluded in the terms, I went to a store to check out what sort of gift cards they had. While I didn’t purchase any third party merchant gift cards on this trip, I did purchase $1,250 in Sam’s Club gift cards which can also be used at Walmart. Following my purchase I immediately received the congratulations email.
I will be waiting to make sure the credit comes through before purchasing any more, but during my visit I made sure to document all of the brands of gift cards on sale. Some of the deals are tremendous when you factor in the 20% off. Let’s take a look!
24% Off Disney Gift Cards
Sam’s Club sells a variety of Disney gift cards at a slightly discounted rate. For example you can purchase a $500 card for $474.98.
If you buy a $500 card for $474.98 (try to spend $1,250 to maximize your purchase) the math works out like this:
- Cost: $474.98
- Minus 20% rebate: – $95
- Final cost: $379.98
- Face value: $500
- Discount $ off face value: $120.02
- Discount % off face value: 24%
I don’t know of anywhere else in the world that you will be able to get 24% off of Disney, especially in such high amounts. If you have this offer on a couple of cards, you could honestly get 24% off of an entire Disney World vacation or even a Disney Cruise considering the dollar amounts. I know this isn’t for everyone, but for those of you looking for Disney discounts, this is the mother lode!
Oh and while you are in the Disney mood, check out my Shanghai Disneyland review plus my Toy Story Hotel review as well. (Shanghai Disneyland Hotel review coming tomorrow!)
36%+ Off Many Cards
Sam’s Club also has many other brands available at 20% off regularly. By stacking these promotions, you can save 36% off face value on these cards. The following cards are generally found as big cardboard displays. They are mostly national brands, but some local businesses are found as well. Brands will vary from store to store.
Some brands were even discounted by 25%-30% at Sam’s Club. A 30% discount off face value before the Amex Offer brings your total discount off face value to 44% once the offer is factored in. That is outstanding!
Great Discounts on Other Brands
There are a number of other brands that are discounted as well. Restaurant chains such as Darden, Subway and Panda Express join Starbucks, Bass Pro Shops, iTunes, Google Play and even Southwest Airlines. With this deal you are getting 24% off Southwest Airlines if that is your thing!
Mastercard Gift Cards
My store also had Vanilla Mastercard and American Express gift cards. These cards are tough to liquidate so I generally wouldn’t recommend purchasing them. Some stores supposedly do carry Vanilla Visas which are much easier to liquidate, although they don’t work well at Walmart. (Note: Some Vanilla Mastercards have PINs and are as easy to liquidate as the Visas, but others do not have PINs, so YMMV.)
If you decide to purchase a variable load card, the bad news is that you can only buy 1 per transaction (at the customer service desk only) and the card cannot be purchased with other items. That means you will be limiting yourself to a $504.94 purchase and won’t be maximizing the full $1,250. If you buy fixed value cards, then you can go up to $1,250 and can mix with other cards/merchandise.
If you look at the very bottom of the picture above, you can also see $100 Uber cards available for $97.48. After the offer that would be a 22% discount on Uber. Not bad!
Sam’s Club Gift Cards
Finally, you can purchase regular old Sam’s Club gift cards. These can be sold as Walmart cards for about 90% of face value most of the time, although if you want to sell in large quantities make sure to contact a reseller first to ensure they will buy them from you. Selling at 90% of face value nets you an instant $125 profit without much hassle!
The maximum amount that can be loaded to a Sam’s Club gift card is $1,000, although some registers will only go to $500. If you want to do $1,000 you can go to the customer service desk. Additionally, you should be able to split your payment onto multiple Amex cards.
Use Caution & Test the Waters
As I mentioned, I personally purchased $1,250 of Sam’s Club gift cards today and received the email that the offer was triggered. I’ll still make sure to follow up to ensure the credit is issued before buying more. It’s always better to be safe with these things, especially with such large dollar amounts.
We also don’t have solid data points as to whether merchant cards work, although I don’t see any reason they won’t. The offer doesn’t expire until January so we have some time to ensure everything works as it should based on the terms.
Conclusion
As you can see, there is a ton of opportunity at Sam’s Club with this latest Amex Offer. In fact, this offer is so good that it will pay for the annual fee on both mine and my wife’s SPG Business cards many times over. Right now I am still formulating my overall strategy given that I have multiple offers, but I might just buy a little bit of everything!
 Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is the old king of travel rewards cards. Right now
bonus_miles_full
Learn more about this card and its features!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
[…] I covered all of your gift card options in this post. […]
I visited Sams Clubs in Florida and Pennsylvania, and was surprised by the poor selection of gift cards. Fortunately, we’re headed to Disney and they had those (albeit in the annoying $50×3 pack, which means lots and lots of codes to enter. Otherwise, you could buy the $200 Mastercards (the $500s couldn’t be rung up together, so I didn’t risk it) and little else. In general, it seemed like a pretty terrible place to buy anything (bulk sizes without meaningful discounts), so I suspect my membership will now go unused (unless AMEX or somebody else wants to offer me another huge discount).
[…] fall, there was a $25 off $250 Best Buy Amex offer, a $20 off $100 at Staples offer and a Sam’s Club offer available. All of these stores sell Disney gift […]
I found these offers on my BRG that weren’t there previously. Anyone know if I can get a one day pass and buy the gift cards without incurring any 10% markup??
Seems if I’m in California there’s no markup fee. Anyone confirm or deny?
one vanilla and mastercard can all be used to just buy Amazon gift cards in Officemax, etc. right? or online at Amazon.com? Does anyone know if they still charge that $1 pre-authorization?
Yes Amazon does put the hold but if you put in the wrong expiration date initially that can be avoided.
I just managed to load the offer to my SPG business card using location services within the AMEX mobile app (since there is a Sam’s Club near where I live). The offer never showed up in my card offers using my regular web access.
So glad it worked for you!
Can I buy $500 vanilla visa gift card using my american express credit card
Yes you can!
Did your 20% credit post on your Amex account yet? Please let us know! Thanks 🙂
Yes I did. I posted separately about that, but it took two days!
I heard mention that the wording of “One per account” might mean that even if you have the offer on 3 Authorized User Cards, it would only trigger the credit *ONCE*
My first credit has posted, but before I go and use the other 3 Cards has anybody confirmed whether or not this is limited to one PER ACCOUNT or one PER CARD?
IME, I got it per card that I saved the offer, even AU cards.
[…] you” in the profile and save them right away. Once the quota is filled, they will disappear. The best one is tied to Sam’s Club, but it is targeted. Unfortunately, I don’t have it on any of my accounts, but it’s […]
I was able to buy multiples of the $200 Mastercards.
I was not able to use them as debit at WM, but I was able to go to CVS and run them as Credit Cards to convert to $500 Gift Cards.
Some of the gains are lost in these maneuvers but still a healthy overall profit and a much better overall payoff than being confined to a single $500 card at Sams (since the Offer is limited to a single transaction).
Jeff,
Were you able to convert the $200 Mastercards to $500 Visa Gift cards in CVS?
Or you bought other store gift cards (i.e. chipotle, applebees etc.)
Shawn,
Converting at CVS was easy. I bought one $500 gift card at a time, and paid the fee in cash (to keep the math clean in $200 and $100 increments).
I had to do one at a time because I know from experience there is a max number of cards you can use per transaction (and just trust me you don’t want to cancel the transaction mid-stream).
I don’t remember if I ran them as debit or credit, but either way it worked no problem. It was a wide-eyed young teller who rung me up so I’m not sure if there are any CVS policies that I may have gotten an easy pass on.
Either way, worked like a charm and got the MO at my local PO no problem as well.
The biggest headache I’ve had with any of this is getting my wife and her parents to Sams to run their AU cards for me. Still trying to herd that pack of cats before the deal ends or Sams implements a policy to block it.
So just to be clear, it sounds like you bought $500 Visa gift cards at CVS with the Master Card Gift cards you bought at Sam’s. Is that right?
I live in the 5 towns area in NY, and have had difficulty getting a MO from the PO with master card gift cards from staples. Seems as if the coding here has changed. You haven’t had problems at the PO?
Correct about CVS – I bought Visa Cards with the MC’s I got from Sams.
Then I took the Visa’s to the PO and bought money orders.
I have no experience with using Mastercards at the PO and read so many nightmare stories about them that I decided it was worth the extra cost to convert to Vanilla Visa.
Just in case I somehow didn’t answer the specific question in that long response I just posted – yes I converted all of the $200 Mastercards to the $500 Visa Gift Cards (Vanilla).
The MasterCard gift cards can only be rung up one at a time. Their system wouldn’t allow multiple MasterCard GiftCards in one transaction. So you can’t maximize it but can net a decent $95 without the hassle of trying to sell merchant gift cards.
There is a Groupon for a discounted Sam’s Club membership if you got this offer, but don’t have a membership.
Just going to Disney is punishment enough. Having to pay for it is like getting kicked in the jewels.
Sounds like the parks will be less crowded then. Win win for everyone!
If I buy a Sam’s GC for $1250 – can I use that later to buy other GC’s at Sam’s..like Disney?
No I don’t believe they will let you use their gift cards to purchase other gift cards.
Is that rule applicable at Walmart as well?
Yes, at least at my local stores.
please update when the credit hopefully posts…
FWIW, My Sam’s won’t let me buy visa or MC gcs with a credit card. Cash/debit only.
Shawn, just curious why do you say Vanilla MCGC is harder to liquidate than Vanilla VGC? Both can’t be used at Walmart greater than $49.99 so with both you have to liquidate at grocery stores/PO or wherever else. I’ve never had any more trouble liquidating the MC Vanillas vs. the Visa Vanillas.
They are supposed to have a pin but my last batch would only run as credit for some reason. These were the new ones that say “prepaid cardholder” at the bottom
I bought one with Prepaid Cardholder on the bottom from sams yesterday and unable to unload via money order.
Am I imagining this, or do offers sometimes show up “late” with various Amex Cards?
I feel like I often check to see if I am “targeted” and am disappointed that i was not – only to be digging around in my offers a few weeks later and find the offer I thought I wasn’t targeted for just sitting there waiting to be “added”.
Has anybody else experienced this, or am I just dense and missing/not noticing the offer the first time I check? Bottom line here is I’ve already checked all my cards and had a few that had this offer, but wondering if it’s worth cycling back through with a second check in a week or two. Thanks for posting, this is a great deal!
I noticed my mobile app does not load all the offers, so maybe issue with what device you are using at the time.
Amex doesn’t always make offers available to everyone at the same time. I’ve had targeted offers show up a few weeks after everyone was posting about them multiple times.
[…] Amazing Sam’s Club Amex Offer Opportunities: 24% Off Disney, 36% Off Many Other Brands or Cash Out… – Which gift cards to buy and how to maximize the very generous targeted Sam’s Club Amex Offer. […]
I assume that I must have a Sam’s club card to be able to go in and buy gift cards?
You can get a guest pass, but you’ll be charged a 10% premium on anything you buy, including gift cards.
Yes. Check Groupon for a discounted $25 membership.
Does employee card count toward the 5 card Amex let’s you have? I wouldn’t think so, but I am not sure.
Cannot those MCgcs be liquidated at groceries stores? (They have pins, don’t they?)
Very much bummed that I don’t have this offer on either of my Business Platinums, nor my SPG business, nor my Amex Platinum employee card. Nice deal!
I didn’t either, using the website, but I found it on the AmEx phone app on 2 of my business cards (SPG and Delta Gold). Go figure!
Can Disney gift Cards bought at Sam’s be used for Disney Park Tickets? Thanks!
Yes they can. The way I did it was by adding these gift cards to my Disney savings account which you can find here: https://disneyvacationaccount.disney.go.com
When buying the tickets (online) on the payment screen you’ll have an option to sign into your savings account. Was pretty easy. I’m not sure if there’s a way to do it without the savings account method but I found it to be the easiest way considering I had a lot of $50 gc. Plus you can always request a Disney gift card a refund/withdraw from the account at any time.
Doing a few trips on the target merry go round with eBay helped basically pay for the tickets (bought Disney gift cards from target.com). I’ll miss that gravy train.