Amex Offers: 6,000 MR Points for $400 Saks Purchase

Contents

1 The Offer
2 The Fine Print
3 Our Verdict

The Offer

Spend $400 at Saks Fifth Avenue with a registered Amex card and receive a bonus 6,000 Membership Rewards points.

If you spend $400 at Saks, you’ll get the standard 400 Membership Reward points for the purchase, plus an additional 6,000 bonus points through this special offer.

If you want to spend exactly $400, you can purchase a $400 gift card, as these are not excluded in the Terms. A $400 e-gift card purchase should work as well to trigger this bonus offer, as the e-cards appear to be processed by Saks themselves, not by an outside party.

The Fine Print

Valid until 9/24/15
Online or in-store
” Limit 1 enrolled Card per American Express online account and limit of 6,000 bonus Membership Rewards points per Card.” If you use the multi-tab trick to enroll multiple cards, you should be able to get the bonus points on each card.
“When we calculate the extra points benefit for Amex EveryDay Card products, points awarded under this offer will not be included.”
Don’t pay with Paypal – must pay directly on Saks site

Our Verdict

Really interesting to see a different sort of Amex Offer than they typical $ discount.

Now let’s look at the reselling angle: You can resell a $400 Saks gift card for 83-84.5% of its value. Let’s assume the lower number of 83%. Your yield on the sale will be $332. You’re effectively paying $68 for 6400 MR points. Not a bad deal.

But wait…it gets much better with the portal: in the Laboratory, there are reports that Saks physical gift cards have worked to trigger Discover portal cashback. The 5% cashback will be double for many of us and will yield 10% cashback. You can also try using the BeFrugal portal (my referral link) or the ShopAtHome portal for 11% cashback. We don’t know if it will work on gift cards though, and it may be smarter to go with Discover, although there are risks in using the Discover portal when not paying with a Discover card.

Assuming you can get 10% from the portal, your cost for the 6400 points will be just $28 instead of $68. That’s a great deal!

Ultimately, I’d only advise this deal for someone who’s willing to pay $68 for 6400 MR points since there are risks involved with the portals.

See these posts to learn more about Amex Offers:

HT: Dannydealguru and runningwithmiles