American Express have updated their shop small website, which now displays a promotion for Small Business Saturday (seen below) that will return on November 28th. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise as it’s always the Saturday after thanksgiving.
Unfortunately the site gives no other additional information about how the deal will be structured, last year you got a $10 statement credit for every $10 you spent at a participating local business and you could do that deal three times per American Express card.
The idea behind small business Saturday has always been to increase the number of small businesses that accept American Express cards. Small businesses are usually hesitant to accept these cards because they are charged a higher fee than Visa and Mastercard (and a lesser extent Discover). Obviously if they have a lot of consumers asking if they accept American Express and then not making a purchase if they say no, they’ll be more likely to accept American Express in the future due to fears of losing customers.
It’s also an easy way to reward cardholders as well. It’ll be interesting to see what promotion American Express offer this year, a lot of merchants were unhappy about a lot of low value transactions last year but offering a smaller credit multiple times has a better chance of sharing the love between small businesses in a participating area.
The small businesses that did the best last year, did one of two things: made gift packs/gift certificates that were $10 in value and/or allowed customers to break bigger purchases into multiple transactions.
Actually, the year before last it was $10 one time with each Amex. The year before that was $25 per card. I would rather get more money per card no matter what form it comes in – but I’m grateful to American Express for offering this promotion at all.
Last year we could buy $10 x 3 with each card. The year before it was $25 but only once.
Prefer the one time purchase. I almost always buy gift cards, and shuffling three different cards for each merchant was annoying and hard to keep track of. So hope it will be one transaction this time.
But whatever. Free money. Love this promotion.
Here is an easy way to register all your Amex cards for small business Saturday. If you follow this Blog, you should have all your Amex accounts linked to twitter IDs so you can take advantage of Amex twitter offers. If you can link your Amex card to a twitter account, like a Fidelity Amex, then it should be eligible for this offer. Go to Tweetdeck.com ASAP and have all your Amex twitter IDs linked to a master ID. With tweetdeck, you can have all your IDs automatically retweet whatever tweet you enter.
When Amex is open for registration, you can spend time entering in all your account numbers at the shop small website. Or, you can go to tweetdeck and just enter in the shop small hash tag, usually #shopsmall, and all your cards will be immediately registered in one fell swoop.
Great idea! All cards in one action! Thanks!
Does Fidelity Amex count for this offer?
I like to look for medium-sized (# of stores, not actual store size) restaurants that fall under the Small Biz umbrella. Last year I found two that were a) Amex Small Biz and b) offering free $10/$30 in gift certificate with a purchase of $X gift cards. Basically I bought 10 $10 gift cards to a seafood place called Harry’s and got an additional $30 bonus gift card. Win! $130 free food at a very tasty restaurant.
I also heard of people stocking up on liquor/wine b/c most local liquor stores were considered small business’s. Might go that route this year. I’ve got 20 Amex’s between myself and my fiance. Plus, I’ll probably add 2 more Serve sub-accounts for a total of 22 Amex’s. If it’s 3 x $10 per card, that’s $600-660 in free money this year! Can’t wait!
how do you have 20 thats so many haha. i only have a PRG and Platinum. what else could i go for? what cards count? i dont want to open up too many more CCs at the moment solely for the sake of small business day (im probably going to apply for an Everyday in a couple months but thats it). any other easy Amex cards (CC or not CC) that I should grab to have more in my arsenal for small bus day?
Thanks for reminding me about Serve sub-accounts! I just signed up my daughter’s pet rat, and our dead guinea pig for cards!
Small business Saturday is such a fun day. It’s a day where pretty much all of us who are in this hobby can get together… go through our sock drawers and dig out all of our amex cards and pontificate on the best way to get value. Last year I got about $200 worth of groceries at a local coop.