Free $20 or 1400/1700 Southwest/AA Miles with WSJ & Amex Checkout

We’ve written about various offers with Amex Checkout.

The Offer

  • Purchase a 12-week Wall Street Journal subscription for only $12, pay with Amex Express Checkout and receive a $10 statement credit.

Net result will be a $2 charge for the 12 weeks. You can cancel before the subscription renews and you won’t pay anything more than the $2. You can choose to buy a digital subscription or a paper subscription; both have the same initial $12 cost.

Okay, that wasn’t so exciting. Now the exciting part….

There are various portals which pay out high amounts for an initial WSJ subscription. See the options here.

  • $20 cashback with Citi Bonus Cash Center, Fatwallet portal (my referral link),  or Lucky Rewards.
  • 2000 points with Barclay Reward Boost [UPDATE: Mileswhip notes that this 2000 points will become $22 after the 10% travel bonus, making Barclay the best deal.]
  • 2100 points with Plenti (technically worth $21, but not necessarily the best option since it’s not that easy to cash out)
  • 1700 AAdvantage points with the AAdvantage Shopping portal
  • 1400 Southwest points with Rapidrewards Shopping portal
  • 1000 United points with Mileage Plus shopping portal

NOTE: The $12 rate is only for new WSJ subscribers who have not been subscribed for the past 180 days. The is tied to an address – it’s per household or business address. [My understanding is that you can get the introductory rate at each address separately, i.e. once at your home address and once at your office. You can try verifying this with WSJ.]

The Fine Print

Like all of these Amex Checkout deal, they are valid until 9/7/15. We don’t know if the portal deal and the introductory WSJ deals will last forver, but I’m optimistic.

Our Verdict

Interestingly, this deal could have been good even without the Amex Offer, but perhaps not worth the hassle. With the Amex Offer, you’re getting the subscription for just $2 so it really becomes a good deal. Whether you opt to buy $20/$22 for $2 or opt to buy 1000-1700 airline miles for $2 you’re in for a win.

IMPORTANT: Mark down on your calendar to cancel the subscription within 12 weeks. The second charge is around $30 and you don’t want to be hit with it!

Multiples?

Where it gets more interesting is if you can multiply the number of subscriptions you can make. We mentioned earlier that the $12 would appear to be tied to an address, so you may be able to (legitimately) make two separate $12 subscriptions for separate addresses and pay with separate Amex cards.

Also note that the terms sound pretty clear (to me) that the portal payout is irrespective of whether you are a first time subscriber or second time subscriber; only the $12/12-week deal which is to first time subscribers. (As noted above, this is is dependent on the past 180 days, and seems to be tied to the address rather than the person.) It appears that the second-time subscription is at least $28.95 so it probably won’t be worthwhile.

Another ‘multiples’ idea would be to subscribe to the introductory digital subscription for $12 and a separate order of introductory physical subscription for $12. My guess is that this would work, but I can’t guarantee it.

Note that they do require you to call in to cancel, no way to do it online.

HT: @jaywogi on Twitter

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103 Comments
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Vic
Vic (@guest_178621)
September 28, 2015 17:14

I just called to cancel my WSJ subscription as well.
They said what they did was simply stopping the automatic renewal, so might as well do it sooner than later.

What I said was I am moving out of the country permanently, and I will not be interested in the content provided by WSJ anymore. Be really firm on this point and it won’t take you more than 2 minutes per subscription. (I had 5, took me 9 minutes.)

Vic
Vic (@guest_180106)
October 2, 2015 13:38

Update:

You can actually “cancel” your subscription rather than just stopping auto renewal.
You have to tell the rep explicitly that you would like to cancel the subscription completely.

Eric
Eric (@guest_175121)
September 20, 2015 20:12

I just logged into my WSJ account to cancel my subscriptions and I can’t find any option for it. Does that mean I need to call to do it or am I just not seeing the option on the site?

Gil
Gil (@guest_175122)
September 20, 2015 20:13

You have to call to cancel

Eric
Eric (@guest_175125)
September 20, 2015 20:20

Thanks, I was hoping to avoid that.

John
John (@guest_162246)
August 21, 2015 11:17

I was unable to finally get my fat wallet account unlocked by filing a complaint with the Wisconsin BBB. The $20 is still pending and not available for withdrawal but at least I have account access. Amex I haven’t done anything about and will probably wait per the terms of the checkout offer.

Superworm
Superworm (@guest_160249)
August 15, 2015 18:31

I’ve yet to get tracking on any of my subscriptions to the WSJ through the AA portal. *SIGH* I’m hoping my emails will get me somewhere, but it is so frustrating that I have to spend time trying to track down all this stuff.

Patrick
Patrick (@guest_160313)
August 15, 2015 22:34

Me too. Ive contacted them about it a couple weeks ago and they told me to wait until yesterday to see if i got the points. I’m on vacaton right now so I’ll check it tomorrow evening when I’m at home.

Patrick
Patrick (@guest_161050)
August 17, 2015 20:12

Just to follow up for you, I didn’t get the points and emailed customer care. This is part of the response I got:

“I have confirmed that 30 days have passed from the The Wall Street Journal purchase date. Since the reward for this order is rather large, it is our policy to investigate with the merchant to find out why it was not credited and attempt to obtain payment for the order in order to pass it back to you. Therefore, I am sending this order to be investigated immediately. Because a third party (The Wall Street Journal) will now be involved, we ask that you please allow 4-8 weeks for a definite resolution. However, we hope to have this issue resolved much sooner than that. “

Patrick
Patrick (@guest_155900)
August 6, 2015 09:23

I hadn’t received my statement credit for my WSJ subscription. Called in about it and they did it manually.

John
John (@guest_155282)
August 5, 2015 01:39

Thank you for the updates Bryan! I know I’ll get my Amex credit after the 90 days if it comes to that. Did fat wallet come through? I was a new user as well. $20 is in my account but they’ve locked it and I can’t get to it. Account comes up as deactivated! Liars and crooks!

I’ve sent them a copy of the charge a copy of the order etc. etc. etc. and they still haven’t budged. So it seems the WSJ issue is a problem there too. They claim they can’t verify the order was placed.

I called and canceled WSJ yesterday. The reason I gave was the fat wallet issue and the Amex credit. Not entirely true but it certainly soured me on ever doing business with them. Who your partner with to do business reflects on you if they screw the customer ????

Bryan
Bryan (@guest_155442)
August 5, 2015 10:50

My FatWallet transactions show $12 purchase, $20 credit, with a status of “Reported”. No idea how long it will take to become payable, but with TopCashBack it usually takes a few weeks on any transaction I make. FatWallet has to get paid before they will pay me. It appears to me the transactions tracked properly in my case. I am not going to contact them about it unless it’s been an abnormally long time. My Southwest portal transactions did not seem to track automatically, so I emailed them after a week. The lady who responded gave me the standard spill about sometimes it takes awhile, etc. but she did tell me they tracked, and “coincidentally” they showed up in my account the very same day! Unfortunately they did not track with the $12 order — they all showed $0 — so I did not get credit towards the 3500 bonus miles. Not worth it to me to fight with them over that, so I let it go 🙂 Hope that helps and hope you get things resolved!

Bryan
Bryan (@guest_156170)
August 6, 2015 21:47

I tried to log in to my FatWallet account tonight, and they have deactivated it. I’m sure they’d love to keep my $100.

DrCardinal
DrCardinal (@guest_156752)
August 8, 2015 02:30

Please keep us posted. I was very tempted to run 50 or 100 signups when the AA 1700 miles link was valid.

Bryan
Bryan (@guest_159106)
August 12, 2015 22:46

FatWallet eventually reinstated my account after I provided them with 15 pages of PDF’s of billing information 🙂

Eric
Eric (@guest_154152)
August 2, 2015 19:56

Has anyone gotten the $10 credit from Amex for this offer? If so, how long after the initial charge did it post? I was billed $12 on 7/23/15 and I still haven’t received the credit.

Bryan
Bryan (@guest_154192)
August 2, 2015 21:20

I ordered a few WSJ subscriptions for friends and family within the first few days of the offer — two on 7/15 and two on 7/17. I went through the Southwest Airlines portal. I received all Southwest points for those. It has taken a long time for some of those subscriptions to post to my credit card. I ordered 5 more subscriptions for friends and family on the 24th through FatWallet because WSJ pulled off all the Cartera portals (Southwest, etc.) and I was afraid they would pull themselves off every portal. (I am kicking myself for waiting it out because I could have scored enough Southwest points for a round trip plane ticket!) They all successfully tracked on FatWallet, pending, in a status of “Reported”. This was my first experience with FatWallet, so I don’t know if that’s normal or not.

Here is the status on all my orders:

1. Order placed 7/15 – Posted to card 7/17 – Amex credit received 7/18
2. Order placed 7/15 – Posted to card 7/19 – Amex credit received 7/20
3. Order placed 7/17 – Posted to card 7/19 – Amex credit received 7/20
4. Order placed 7/17 – Posted to card 7/24 – Amex credit NOT received
5. Order placed 7/24 – Posted to card 7/27 – Amex credit NOT received
6. Order placed 7/24 – Posted to card 7/27- Amex credit NOT received
7. Order placed 7/24 – Posted to card 7/27 – Amex credit NOT received
8. Order placed 7/24 – Posted to card 7/28 – Amex credit NOT received
9. Order placed 7/24 – Posted to card 7/30 – Amex credit NOT received

Something I think strange about the $10 Amex credits that DID post is that they were posting as DirectWineOffer — which is the wrong offer! I didn’t order anything from the WSJ wine website. So maybe something is screwed up in their system and they are working it out!

Bryan
Bryan (@guest_154198)
August 2, 2015 21:33

Update — contacted Amex via chat on order #4. She issued me a “goodwill credit of $10” and said that there appeared to be problems on the merchant’s end, which is why it didn’t post automatically. I will give another few days for the other ones to post and contact Amex about the others if not. Hope this info is helpful!

Bryan
Bryan (@guest_154531)
August 3, 2015 15:28

Update #2 – Decided to chat about my PRG cards today. At first, I was told that if the credit hadn’t posted within 90 days of 9/7/2015, Amex would manually give me the credit, but I needed to wait that long. I explained about the CSR giving us credit last night and the explanation she gave about WSJ having problems on their end, and this guy had to get a supervisor to do it. Last night only took about 2 minutes. I was on chat with this guy for at least 20 minutes before he came back and said I should see the credit post in 3-5 days.

Elliot
Elliot (@guest_153853)
August 2, 2015 00:37

Ditto through United shopping portal – received 1600 miles but still no Amex credit.

Eric
Eric (@guest_154101)
August 2, 2015 16:36

I got the AA 1700 miles, but still no Amex credit as well, long time~~~~~~~~~~

John
John (@guest_153819)
August 1, 2015 23:13

Anyone get their fat wallet or Amex money? Like others my charge took a few days to go through. It has been 10 days now and I haven’t got my $10

Fat Wallet can’t verify the charge (because WSJ took a week to charge order) and froze my account even though the $20 is in.

Overall this offer has been the worst. I’m out $12 when I was hoping to make $18!

I know I can get the money from Amex after the end of the problem. I just hate to wait that long Cause I’m so over this.

Pag
Pag (@guest_153846)
August 2, 2015 00:32

I did this with Barclay Reward and got my $20 already. However, Amex credit hasn’t posted yet (which is surprising).

Bryan
Bryan (@guest_156171)
August 6, 2015 21:47

My account was deactivated today too. $100 worth of cash back pending.

Elliot
Elliot (@guest_149868)
July 24, 2015 13:51

Gone from United too