Amex Offers: $25 off $45 for Sam’s Club Membership, Not Working on Other Purchases

Sam’s Club recently started accepting Amex cards and as part of the rollout they’re offering a special for the purchase of Sam’s membership using an Amex card.

 

The Offer

Direct Link

  • Purchase a Sam’s Club membership for $45 or more with your registered Amex card and receive a $25 statement credit.

Screen Shot 2015-10-08 at 12.45.46 AM

This offer is showing on most Amex cards in the online login.

Basic Sam’s membership costs $45 and using this offer you’ll get $25 back and end up paying just $20 for the first year of membership.

The Fine Print

  • Valid until 10/31/15
  • $25 credit applies to membership purchase only
  • New membership purchase only; not renewal, upgrade, or add-ons, or additional memberships
  • In-store only, not online

Other Purchases/Gift Membership

The big question on everyone’s mind was whether the ‘membership’ requirement would actually be enforced. Now that the credits have begun posting, it appears that this is really being enforced. Sam’s membership purchases are coded differently (probably by way of Level 3 Processing) and clearly come up differently than other purchases.

There was some hope that at least ‘Gift Memberships’ purchased made in-store would work to trigger the offer. The trick here is that these ‘gift membership’ cards function entirely like Sam’s/Walmart gift cards and could then be used for any ordinary purchase. However, these purchases also come up differently and do not appear to be triggering the Amex Offer credits.

Note: This is not yet confirmed positively. See Slickdeals for the latest info.

It remains unclear if the offer credit will work for membership renewals; renewals should code the same way as new membership purchases and it’s hard to see how they can possibly make that not work. That said, they seemed to be determined to limit this offer and it’s possible that it won’t work for renewals either as per the terms.

Our Verdict

After the fiasco of the last Sam’s offer of $20 off $20, they seem to have actually gotten this one coded properly to only give the offer credits in a more limited way.

Other ways to purchase membership at a discount

Bear in mind that if you want to buy Sam’s membership there are numerous other ways to purchase it at a discount:

  • There is a deal currently available until 10/10/15 to get Sam’s membership for $45 and receive a free $20 Sam’s e-gift card, along with a bunch of other goodies. And that deal can be done online making a little easier than the Amex Offer option. (LINK TO OFFER) There have also been similar such offers on Groupon in the past.
  • If you have a friend to refer you, you’ll each get a $10 Sam’s gift card with the referral. (LINK TO OFFER) Obviously, the Amex Offer is better than this deal, but this one can be done online and some may prefer it.
  • If you are  a member of the military or family, you can get a $15 Sam’s e-gift card with a membership purchase. (LINK TO OFFER)
  • Login to your Discover Deals account and search for Sam’s Club for an offer to get a $10 Sam’s gift card with membership.
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DrForce
DrForce (@guest_193413)
November 4, 2015 09:31

Have there been any reports of people getting this to work with renewals?

FamilyOnABudget
FamilyOnABudget (@guest_182662)
October 8, 2015 14:33

I need to renew my membership. If I can get to Sam’s this weekend I will try and renew with my AMEX card and see what happens.

Nate
Nate (@guest_182543)
October 8, 2015 09:23

Does amex fidelity work with deal? $20 Sam’s e-gift card seems to be a way better deal but since I canceled my sam’s membership on july do you think they will truely enforce 6 month restriction policy? Does this amex deal have this restriction?

HORACE
HORACE (@guest_182665)
October 8, 2015 14:40

I think that your response may be incorrect, in theory, but not in practice, Chuck.

If this were a Tweet-able offer, one could presumably add it to their Fidelity AMEX card account.

HOWEVER, even adding it to your card, there is no assurance that one would receive the payout should you use it as AMEX intended — as it seems up to the card issuer to offer the credit.

That said, I am not sure it would work, as this offer appears to be somewhat targeted and thus may not be able to be added to non AMEX issued AMEX cards.

More to the point, there really is no incentive to take advantage of this offer when there are more lucrative offers out there.

In fact, the Living Social and Groupon offers are reachable via Cash Back portals, thereby increasing the amount you can receive back when choosing that offer over the AMEX issued card offer presently hyped by AMEX.

So, in theory, perhaps, but given the pitfalls as well as better offers out there, in practice, one should give pause before taking advantage of this deal offered by AMEX.

Nate
Nate (@guest_182669)
October 8, 2015 15:03

Thanks for the response. Could you tell which offer doesn’t have 6 month restriction? And which one is better if someone wants to get sam’s plus membership?