The Offer
Direct Link (currently only 1.5%)
- Simply Best Coupons will be offering 2% cashback on American Express Business gift cards on June 5, 2015.
Where it get even more interesting is that NBA finals are coming up and the NBA Compass card from BBVA offers 5x rewards on all purchases during that time period. This means that you can actually get 7x when combining the two.
The Fine Print
- One-day only, June 5th.
- Business gift cards only.
- Don’t purchase denominations of more than $2,000 as that negates cashback.
- Don’t use a promo code as that negates cashback.
- Max order of Amex business gift cards is $100,000 per 14 days. If you’re asked for a TaxID Number (on large orders they sometimes do that), you can use your SSN instead.
- No need to use a Business credit card to buy Amex gift cards.
Our Verdict
The 2% comes and goes from various portals. We’ve even seen it go up slightly higher at 2.25% recently.
Besides the standard interest in the 2% rate, this deal is particularly interesting for NBA cardholders. Instead of hitting up every CVS (or whatever) in your 100-mile radius during the small period of time in which you get 5x, you can buy an AGC and spend it down at CVS over time.
If you order, say, $10,000 in Amex gift cards on June 5th (or possibly a different day if other offers come from other portals during the NBA finals week), then you’d be getting $700 back combined from the portal and from NBA. If you can unload those with $100 in fees, you’ll end up with $600 profit. This really is an awesome deal.
If you don’t have the NBA card, you can use an Amex credit card and get $10 off a purchase of $200 or more via Amex Offer.
.1% Bonus
In the past, Simply Best has offered an added bonus for those who make more than $20,000 in purchases. We don’t know if such a promo will be running this time as well.
Caveats
Two things to be aware of:
- We don’t know what BBVAs tolerance level is for manufactured spend. That said, it could be that buying one large order of Amex gift cards looks less ‘suspicious’ than multiple smaller purchases.
- We still need to clarify that there’s no cash advance issue with BBVA on Amex gift cards. FrequentMiler reports that most – but not all – issuers are safe. (We recently noted that Citi credit cards may now be okay as well.) Setting your cash advance limit to zero would take care of this issue. Also, if you’re cash advance limit is less than the purchase amount then you should probably be safe.
- UPDATE: A couple of readers mention a limit of $5k per day (or possibly it’s really per transaction) on the NBA card. This would mean that you can’t make a huge Amex gift card purchase. We don’t know if it’s true, but we’re mentioning it anyway.
If you’re new to the Simply Best Coupons portal, consider using my referral link when signing up. You’ll get the standard $5 signup bonus and I’ll get 20% of the cashback you earn, up to $50. (Note the signup bonus threshold can not be triggered with an Amex gift card purchase, so you’d have to use the portal for other purchases in order to get that $5 bonus as there is a $15 minimum payout amount.)
Hat tip and thanks to Miles4More on Twitter for bringing this offer to our attention.
Also thanks to FrequentMiler’s awesome guide  on Amex gift cards for some of the info in this post.
Gosh, I’m thinking of applying for this NBA card right now…if only the card was instant-issue. The card is now available with no annual fee and $100 signup bonus.
