Monday Morning Miles Talk is a regular series that has some smaller, more quirky ideas/deals to kick off the work week.
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Using the $100 Mercedes Benz Certificate from Amex
I had my wife sign up for the Mercedes Benz Platinum a few months back before it disappeared for good. One of the lesser known perks of the card is that you get a $100 certificate to use at a Mercedes Benz dealer. This is intended to be used on repairs for your Benz I think, but it can be used on merchandise at the dealership as well.
Using the Certificate
We headed off to the closest Mercedes Benz dealership with the certificate in hand. We checked out all of the stuff they had to offer and when we went to redeem it they told us they didn’t know how to use it. They claimed that it had to be drawn up as a car repair or something like that. They said we should come back during the week when the woman in the office was working and would know how to do it. Basically they were lazy and didn’t want to do anything.
So we decided to head to the next closest Benz dealership which actually had a lot more to offer. It seems like each dealership has different items and not every one has a merchandise store. If they do have a store it is usually in the repair shop office area.
The second location had
- T-shirts, polo shirts, coats, sweaters,
- towels, beach chairs, beach bags
- a Monopoly game, toy cards, stuffed animals, soccer balls
- cologne, perfume, bracelets, earrings
- tumblers, coffee mugs, decanters, champagne glasses
- key chains, flashlights & more
Needless to say it had a lot to choose from. Once we picked out what we wanted we gave the woman the certificate. She didn’t know how to use it either and I thought, here we go again. But she was very pleasant and assured us they would figure it out. She went to the back and a few minutes later it was handled and we had to pay the $2 difference.
What did we Get?
We went back and forth on a few things. I even consider buying some stuff for resale. We ended up settling on a t-shirt for myself, a cardigan/wrap type of sweater for my wife, and a pop up beach table with cup holders.
Conclusion
I don’t put a lot of value in this perk because these are things I would have never normally bought. Having said that I am not going to pass up some free swag! You could also look at resale options if you just want to cash out the certificate and offset some of the annual fee you paid.
My advice would be that if the first dealer is being a pain just go on to the next one. Also if you don’t like what the first one has to offer it is worth checking a second one if you have multiple locations near you.
Let me know if you have used the perk and what you ended up getting in the comments section.
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The table came in very handy this week at the beach. If you end up seeing one when you go in it is a good option.
I used mine earlier this year and got a couple jackets (pullover and really nice soft shell). Virtually same experience as you – parts guy told me to look at the display and pick some things out. Once I had them in mind, the cashier couldn’t figure out how to use it, even when I pointed out the instructions were on the back. I ended up coming back another time, ordered some items from the online catalogue, and the parts manager dealt with the certificate afterwards and didn’t even charge me the $8 overage.
I am surprised they hadn’t had more customers use it in the past. But worth the minor hassle imo.
At what point do you get the $100 cert? According to the Amex site it’s earned at renewal but it seems like some of you are getting it in the 1st year. I already go the $1000 cert towards a new MB after meeting the MSR.
It came in the mail a a month or two after approval
I was super happy with the certificates. I had one from my account and one from my wife’s, so $200 to spend. I was impressed with the quality for the reasonable prices. I got a nice duffel bag, backpack, camping chair, travel mug, and coffee cup. Employee was awesome equalizing the 2 separate orders so they added up to $100 each. For example, taking 10% off for a floor model chair…
I was also surprised how reasonable the prices were. The T-Shirt was $22 which is what you pay for a shirt pretty much anywhere. Key Chains were around $11, coffee mugs $10-15. I thought everything would be doubled.
I used it the first time and got a few umbrellas and a mug. The price difference was also a few dollars. I had another which expired while I was away. Oops! I did want to use it but wasn’t overly upset as I didn’t want anymore umbrellas. lol
Yeah since it doesn’t factor into the decision on whether or not to get the card it is kind of a throw away perk imo. Great if you are able to get any value out of it but not a big deal if you can’t. There was a pretty nice beach bag/purse at the first location my wife really wanted…too bad their employees were tools and we had to move on. If we had 2 certificates I probably would have grabbed stuff for resale 🙂
You got the swag AND a post (with associated clicks). 😉
Haha true. I wasn’t planning on writing anything up but I got a lot of questions about it when I posted a picture in our Facebook group and I realized there are probably quite a few people with these still out there.