Sam’s Club Amex Offer Final Update
Update: My personal credit has now posted for the purchase of a $20 Sam’s Club gift card.
Last week I wrote about a pretty amazing Amex Offer for Samsclub.com. The offer gives $20 off of $20 at the retailer’s website. The best part is that it is widely available on the American Express website and is also available via Twitter. I was able to link all 22 of my family’s card to this offer.
Shortly after posting about the offer, reports started coming in that the transaction was being coded as “SAMSCLUB COM ONLINE PHOTO”. While that may seem fine, online photo purchases were specifically excluded in the terms.
At first we thought that only gift card purchases were coding this way, but it actually turned out that everything was. One person bought toilet paper and it was reported as an “Online Photo” purchase. Â Many people were upset by this, but I urged caution and to wait.
My Experience & An Update
When the offer first came out, I did a test purchase with one Amex card. My purchase of a $20 Sam’s Club gift card initially coded a photo purchase, but a few days later the pending charge changed to “Samsclub.com”. At that point I was confident the credit would post as usual, but I still wanted to wait to make sure.
Well it has been nearly a week and after my charge disappeared for awhile, it finally showed back on my account. While my credit hasn’t posted yet, I am confident it will based on the experiences of others. Thanks to PDXDealsGuy for sending over the above screenshot showing the credit posting normally. My charge is coded exactly the same way.
What to Purchase
I gave a few ideas on what to purchase in the original post, but here are a few as well. Of course you can purchase a variety of merchant gift cards with some of them coming at a slight discount. You can also purchase Visa/MC gift cards as well, although they come with a fee.
The third option is to purchase Sam’s Club gift cards. These cards also work at Walmart, so this could be a way to get free money towards a future purchase. Out of simplicity I think I am going to go this route, although some people have reported activation issues so I will see how my experience goes with the one card I ordered.
Conclusion
It should be safe now to go crazy buying whatever your heart desires on Samsclub.com. American Express sure has been generous this year between Smart & Final and Sam’s Club. They say good things come in threes! How about another fantastic offer like these ones Amex? Is that too much to ask? 😉
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have 3 AMEX, figured i would test with one first. purchased $20 GC(physical card good at Sams or Walmart) online.
i have received the card but no statement credit yet.
I ordered a $50 mastercard gift card for $52.38 and used two Amex cards to pay for it. My order has been shipped, and I just received the $20 credit for both cards today. I made the purchase on May 10th.
Mine transactions have totally disappeared for the last few days. Wondering what is happening….
My plan was to get 5 $20 Sam’s Club Gift cards (with 5 Synced cards). Then use them to pay for $100 Visa or MasterCard at Walmart. Does anyone know if I can use SC GC to buy Visa/MC GC at Walmart?
Does anyone know if there’s a 10% charge for non-members buying a Sam’s Club gift card, i.e. how much would a $20 SC GC cost a non-member?
Thanks!
There is no 10% charge for non-members to buy Sam’s Club gift card. That’s what I bought, but haven’t received it yet.
its showing that it would actually charge you $22 for a $20 GC which I think is ridiculous because then if you take that $20 gift card and use it to shope the website as a nonmember you’re gonna pay a 10% up charge again so it’s essentially doubling your up charge
Others have reported there is no 10% surcharge for Sam’s Club gift cards. Is it showing you the fee? I can get clarification on the exact way to do it.
I used to use the fabulous now deceased red bird to meet minimum spending. I’m wondering if this strategy would work: I buy a few vanilla master card gift cards at sams club online after I linked my american express card. Could I use those cards to reload my target red prepaid card? Let’s say that I buy 3 $100 gift cards, would I get the $20 off and they will be mailed to me for free?
Thanks much
I think the Visas will work, but they charge $6 for a $100 Visa. All of the Mastercards listed on the Sam’s Club website say they are not pin-enabled. This information may not be accurate, however I have never tested Vanilla Mastercards (only Visas), so I can’t say whether they will work.
Thanks Shawn.
My pending charges have disappeared from all my Amex cards and the orders are still stuck at ‘processing’. I ordered Sam’s club GCs…wish I had ordered Visa GCs instead
I ordered 4 sams club cards. Even if it didn’t work with this Amex offer I wouldn’t lose anything!
Sam’s GCs upgradeable to Sunny Variable Load GCs at WM?
SAMS Club GC’s upgradeable to Sunny variable load GCs at WM?
I was worried about the gift cards coding so I ordered a bunch of cleaning supplies because they were free shipping, I noticed lots of baby supplies diapers etc fee shipping also. My orders arrived in 2 days. Great deal.
In the past when I have ordered Sam’s Club gift cards they have come unactivated and I have had to call to activate it. Kind of annoying, but in this case free money is free money.
I just bought a $45 membership this morning (no Sam’s Clubs in my area unfortunately – so wasn’t able to take advantage of Groupon) to unlock the ability for me to purchase eGift cards. I used split tender between 2 Amex’s, hoping that it works to generate 2 x $20 credits. Still no immediate email notifications for using the offers, but the immediate pending post on my Amex account are showing up as Samsclub.com, FWIW. I say FWIW, since my previous charges showed up as photo, then dot-com, then a B&M store in Texas, and then finally dot-com again! But all’s well that ends well, as I eventually got the credit (as shown in the screen shot Shawn posted, above).