All You Need to Know About the Airbnb Amex Offer

[Updated 11/22/15]

Every once in a while there comes along an especially lucrative Amex Offer and the recent Airbnb offer fits this bill, see #AmexAirbnb $50 Off $100 at Airbnb, Lock in Discount with Gift Cards! for more details on this offer.

The key here to maximize the offer is to buy $100 Airbnb gift cards using each of your Amex cards at a 50% discount and then use up the Airbnb gift cards for all your rentals in the future. Numerous questions arose as to if/how this will work and we’ll try to clarify this in Q-A format.

Please note that we don’t have any inside information and what’s presented here is simply culling from the comments of the previous post along with a few other sources.

Q: Is this offer still available?

A: Nope  Yes, at the time of this writing it’s still possible to get this offer by tweeting #amexairbnb from a connected Twitter account. You may also be able to find it in some Amex logins and save it that way.

Q: Can I get this offer on multiple cards? The terms seem to indicate I can only get it once!

A: As with all Amex offers, if you save it on multiple cards you can get the offer on each one. The terms just mean to say that if you save it on the same card using two different ‘saving methods’ you’ll only get one credit.

Q: Can I use my prepaid Amex card – Bluebird or Serve – as well?

A: You can not use it to buy a gift card, but you can use it to book a rental directly. [updated]

This offer (like many Amex offers) can be saved on those prepaid cards; however, the Airbnb system recognizes and rejects the purchase of gift cards with prepaid cards. The system does accept prepaid’s for rental purchases directly.

Q: Can I purchase Airbnb gift cards and get the $50 statement credit or will I only get the offer credit when paying for rentals directly?

A: Yes, the terms specify that gift card purchases are part of the promotion as well.

Q: Are the credits actually posting for gift card purchases?

A: Unfortunately, it seems that they don’t have the offer coded properly to credit gift card purchases automatically. Non-gift card purchases are triggering the Amex confirmation email and offer credit automatically, but gift card purchases are not.

The purchase of gift cards is initially coming through as a pending “Braintree” charge; after the charge posts, it switches over to “AirBnbGC”, but it apparently is still not coded properly to trigger the offer.

This leaves us with two options: 1) Wait another month or two and hope that they batch process them all on its own when they realize what’s going on, 2) Try to have it manually applied.

Update 12/12/15: It appears that it is coming through automatically after a few weeks or a month, but possibly not for everyone. It may be worth waiting some time so as not to deal with the hassle of calling in.

Q: I’m not interested in waiting; what’s the best way to get it manually applied?

A: You can chat with them and they may credit you (or they’ll tell you to wait 90 days), but many are mentioning much more success by calling 1-800-297-7500 and submitting a claim for ALL of your used offers. They’ll hopefully take your claim (without telling you to wait 90 days) and they’ll get all of the offers credited manually. See this comment and this comment for more details.

Q: Is there a limit to the number of gift cards I can buy per day?

A: There is no official limit, but it may be a good idea to limit yourself to purchasing just 3 gift cards per day as more than that seems to run into technical problems.

Q: Can I buy a gift card for myself?

A: NO! The system won’t let you buy for yourself, and if you send the gift card to a different account the system won’t allow the gift card to be applied to the account that it was purchased from.

Q: Okay, but does the gift card need to be used with the address/account it was sent to or can I use it with any Airbnb account other than the one it was purchased from?

A: Any account other than the account it was purchased from will work. However, don’t try to manually enter the code into an account other than the one it was sent to; you’ll need to click the ‘Apply Gift Card’ button in the email in order for it to work.

Q: Does the name on the credit card have to match the name on the Airbnb account? Can a friend give me access to their Airbnb account so that I can buy gift cards under their account and send it to my own account?

A: Yes, that works. That’s a great idea!

Q: Any workaround way for me to buy gift cards for myself if I don’t have someone to do it with?

A: Yes, you can try opening a second Airbnb account for yourself and send the gift cards from the new account to your regular account.

Don’t do this the other way around since you need to build a reputation on Airbnb and you want to do the actual bookings with your regular account; just use the new account as a means of buying gift cards. Note, I don’t know if it’s officially within the rules to have two accounts and it may be better to try finding a second person to do it with.

Q: Can I apply more than one Airbnb gift card to a rental?

A: Yes, the Airbnb system now works (similar to Amazon) that you redeem the gift card into your Airbnb balance and you then apply the balance to the rental. Multiple gift cards are all pooled together and can be used – combined – to pay for the rental.

[Note, from what I gather, the system used to work differently and did not allow multiple gift cards on a single rental. For that reason, you may read people mention that there is a limit of one gift card. Under the new system, you can use multiple gift cards.]

Q: Is there a limit to how many gift cards can be redeemed into my Airbnb account?

A: Officially, there is no limit. In practice, most people are running into a problem applying too many gift cards to their account and the system won’t allow then to do so. Some people bumped into this on gift card #4, some on #5, some on #6, some on #8, some on #9. Getting stuck on #6 seems to be especially common.

Just to reiterate, the issue here is not with using multiple gift cards on a rental, the issue is just getting the gift cards attached to your Airbnb account. Once you cross that hurdle, you shouldn’t have any problem using all the gift cards together for a rental, no matter how large.

Q: Any workaround here to get all my gift cards applied to my account?

A: Yes, multiple readers report that you can call in and they’ll apply them all without a hitch.

Also, you can do $300 (or more) per day. Thus you can easily just do a few each day and you’ll be able to get all the gift cards applied to your account.

Q: Can I just keep the gift card and apply it to my account sometime next year when I am ready to use it?

A: No! If an Airbnb gift card which is not applied to an account for 90 days – it expires and the funds are returned to the Amex card (which will result in the offer credit being reversed as well, in my experience).

Once you apply the gift card to your account it will never expire; the key is to make sure that you get all the gift cards attached to your account within 90 days.

Q: Are there any rentals that gift cards won’t work on?

A: The only exclusion mentioned is that gift cards can not be applied to long-term reservations (28 nights or longer).

Q: Can I make the $100 Airbnb purchase on December 31 or does the charge have to clear by then?

A: As with all online Amex Offers, it’s not recommended to wait until the last minute. It may work in some cases, but not always. The charge has to clear by December 31 and that doesn’t always happen for online purchases. See Online Credit Card Purchases – Transaction Date and Post Date for more details.

Q: Can I use up an Airbnb referral credit to pay for part of a rental and apply my gift card balance for the remainder of the rental? (If you signup with a referral link you get a $20 Airbnb credit and if you refer others you rack up Airbnb credit as well.)

A: Yes.

Q: I’m getting error messages when trying to navigate the Airbnb site. Help!

A: Reportedly, the site works best with Mozilla or Chrome, and not with Safari.

Q: Any other promotions going on with Airbnb that I can stack with this Amex offer?

A: Yes, as noted above new members can get $20 toward their first $75 booking by signing up with a referral link. Existing members can get $20 for each referral who purchases a rental and $80 if the referral becomes a host.

There’s also a separate Virgin America Elevate promotion going on which offers new Airbnb members 1500 points and a $20 credit, see more info here. Existing Airbnb members can also earn 1 point per dollar spent on Airbnb by booking through Virgin America.

Special thanks to readers Fuaxblogger and Jeff for clarifying some of these things in the comments of the previous post.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

128 Comments
newest
oldest most voted

Interested
Interested (@guest_387496)
April 11, 2017 02:25

Anyone still have AirBnb gcs they’d like to sell?

FlyingBoat
FlyingBoat (@guest_244150)
April 9, 2016 13:04

I had about 20 $100 credits come through and not one claw back. Woo Hoo!

I wouldn’t have minded using AirBNB but I find them much more expensive than VRBO for the situations I have looked into. I do have $300 I do still need to spend with them because I had applied 3 of the gift codes.

FlyingBoat
FlyingBoat (@guest_228934)
February 26, 2016 23:54

I let a few of $100 GCs ride and didn’t claim them. (I had called in on them earlier and received the $50 credits.)

I received the $100 credit 3 weeks ago because they weren’t claim and I have yet to see the earlier $50 credits removed. I think because this was past 90 days or because they manually credited, perhaps they weren’t tied to the original $100 and therefore the $50 stands.

I had bought a bunch more on 12/31. If I don’t see the $50 credits removed on the earlier ones I am going to let them ride as well. VRBO looks to have a lot better prices, so I would rather get cash.

Shivaji
Shivaji (@guest_230248)
March 3, 2016 03:45

How does the offer credits show when you called before? How does the GC credit show now?

I have few haven’t claimed yet, want to get some data point to decide whether to claim it before 90 days, thanks

jackgopack4
jackgopack4 (@guest_241302)
April 3, 2016 09:36

I bought one GC that was just in the last week refunded. Haven’t seen the $50 claw back.

Gaurav
Gaurav (@guest_228206)
February 24, 2016 04:06

All my credits posted on Feb 17!

Calwatch
Calwatch (@guest_227226)
February 19, 2016 18:26

I was going to call sometime this month but the credits posted without my call today.

goodMXguy
goodMXguy (@guest_227163)
February 19, 2016 12:06

I called the number posted in past posts. I was told to wait until the end of march (3 months after the last day of the offfer)…

PG
PG (@guest_226788)
February 18, 2016 13:36

Pain in the… After a few calls, I got someone in India, I assume, who was able to get the credit posted to one card, but insisted that the offer was only available for me once and couldn’t be applied to my other cards. Called back and got the same fellow again who just repeated himself. What are the odds?

PG
PG (@guest_226877)
February 18, 2016 17:00
  PG

Totally bizarre. He was very nice but VERY clear with me- just one credit per customer. Just logged in a couple hours later and the $50 credits posted to all my cards with the used offer. Strange. Next, my wife’s cards…

PG
PG (@guest_227161)
February 19, 2016 12:03
  PG

…which all already have the credit posted now that I’ve checked. Seems like their computer may have followed the AU links between our accounts and gave her the credits where due; even on a card where she had the offer but my AU didn’t. A little creepy if you ask me…but glad to not have to make any more calls on this one

PG
PG (@guest_227520)
February 21, 2016 13:53
  PG

so, stupid amount of comments here, but mystery solved. I now see $50 manually added to my account, meanwhile all my airbnb offers also appeared, not yet visible to the csr I spoke with, but supposedly having posted the day before I talked with him. So unless they catch it, seems I got a $50 bonus for my troubles…

Dima
Dima (@guest_225344)
February 12, 2016 21:38

Finally got all the credits, 5 on AMEX cards and 3 on co-branded cards. For AMEX I had called the number mentioned in the comments, and for co-branded cards I used twitter.

bob
bob (@guest_220744)
January 28, 2016 09:10

I keep getting amex chat reps saying that I can only get one credit per username……are you all getting one chat rep to issue all of your $50 credits?

Susan
Susan (@guest_220777)
January 28, 2016 11:53

I got all 38 via chat but had to do it multiple times. Start with just one card and after the rep triggers one credit, ask for another card. If no luck, then end conversation and try another rep. Took me several weeks to do this, so I suggest if you are the cardholder, to call the 800 number as that’s much faster. Most chat reps are clueless or useless.

bob
bob (@guest_220893)
January 28, 2016 19:34

thanks

Susan
Susan (@guest_218745)
January 20, 2016 05:18

I also received all the credits for all my AMEX cards — all 38 of them via chat. Made over $1,400 selling them to friends/family/colleagues.

http://wp.me/p6O8NO-iJ