Update 12/30/18: Not much time to use your credit up for 2018, do this now if you haven’t already.
A lot of people are trying to figure out how to use up the new $50 Saks credit from American Express. We’ll do a quick recap of options here in this post.
As a reminder, American Express added a new benefit to the American Express Personal Platinum card offering a $50 credit towards Saks Fifth Avenue purchases. You receive a $50 credit on purchases made from January 1st until June 30th and another $50 credit for purchases made from July 1st until December 31st, 2018.
You need to enroll first at this link. You’ll see ‘Enrolled’ if already enrolled.
A few options (some affiliate links below):
- Buy gift cards. Officially, gift card are excluded in the terms. In practice, they seem to be working to trigger the credit.
- You can buy a $50 Saks gift card at a Saks store. If you have two Amex Platinum cards, you can buy a single $100 Saks gift card and split the charge. Note, some stores seem to have difficulty doing this. Also remember, outlets and Off Fifth won’t work.
- You can buy a physical Saks gift card online. Problem here is that Saks recently changed the minimum gift card to $150 so you’ll be getting a 33% discount on the gift card if all works out. Not the best deal, but an option.
- Don’t buy an e-gift card. Those appear to be routed through a third-party seller, and I assume it won’t trigger the offer credit.
- Shop online for $50 items.
- You can find sale items $50 and under in the Men’s department here, and you can sort it high-to-low to get the ones close to $50. Also check this filter for items $50-$150, sorted low-to-high.
- You can find sale items $50 and under in the Women’s department here, and you can sort it high-to-low to get the ones close to $50. Also check this filter for items $50-$150, sorted low-to-high.
- Above is just a sample from the sale item selection. You can also go department-by-department and filter to find items in the $50 price range. For example, here is a link for men’s shoes $50 and less. And here’s for men’s shoes $50-$150 sorted low-to-high.
- Here’s a link for sale beauty items $50 or less, sorted high-to-low.
- And of course, there’s always socks.
- Shop at a Saks store. Only advantage of shopping in-store is that you can split-tender across multiple Platinum cards by putting $50 on each. Note, some stores seem to have difficulty doing this. Also remember, outlets and Off Fifth won’t work. Use Ebates in-store cashback for Saks store shopping.
Let us know what you’ll be buying in the comments or if you have a good idea. Only a month left for this credit, and worth doing it a few days early to ensure it credits in 2018. I’d recommend reviewing all the details about this Saks $50 credit in this dedicated post.
Remember to use a shopping portal for your online purchases. Also, there’s an Amex Offer to get 2x Membership Rewards points; worth adding that before shopping as well. You can use Shoprunner to get free two-day shipping.
View Comments (89)
Since there is no SAKS fifth avenue store where I live, is it possible to buy a SAKS fifth avenue physical gift card from a SAKS OFF fifth store nearby to trigger the $50 credit ?
Amex does claw back the credit if you return the online order (it took 2 months for my clawback to happen)
You can signup for emails for a 10% off online code here: If you're using gmail you can also add a filter parameter for as many coupons as you need. For example: Signup with youremailaddress+SAKSfilter1@gmail.com, youremailaddress+SAKSfilter2@gmail.com, etc. The email code comes in about 12 hours and expires in about 30 days.
https://www.saksfifthavenue.com/html/email_popup/email_collect_popup_main.jsp
Does anyone know if the AMEX Platinum personal card has 100k sing up bonus of its mostly for AMEX Platinum Business?
How about 2019? or did this end in 2018?
Every 6 months it refreshes, see the linked post. I already used mine for first half of 2019.
tx, I enrolled last year and I see that there's no need to re-enroll. Will to go to the store to purchase another $50 gc and together with my daughter's $100 gc wiil buy her a $215 perfume for a net cost of $15. :) I hope there's no restriction on using gc's.
https://www.saksfifthavenue.com/bond-no-9-new-york-saks-fifth-avenue-for-her/product/0426689857016?CAWELAID=1354178533&site_refer=GGLPRADS001&cagpspn=pla
My purchase from 12/26 posted on 12/31. The credit showed up 1/4. I guess I need to call them to verify that they applied last quarter's credit...
Any word on if that was the 2019 or 2020 credit?
From my own experiences, I can say that it should definitely have applied for 2019. I made a purchase on 12/31 (I had needed a replacement card) and it was not credited for 2019 and they said there was nothing I could do to make it apply for 2019. Worse yet I had made another purchase on 1/1 and so I only got credit for one.
I made a purchase on 12/30 and it showed up as pending 12/30, but when it actually posted to my card, it showed up as 1/2. Bummer! Do you guys think I will have any luck in getting the credit back-dated?
I'm trying to buy some stuff with Shoprunner, and I'm getting the shipping charge as 15.00 when I select the free shipping, which doesn't make much sense. Any ideas?
OK, to answer my own question, there appear to have some bugs if they think your IP address is outside of the US. You have to make sure that traffic to "www.saksfifthavenue.com" goes through a US-based IP address. What a nuisance!
Otherwise, you can still get free shipping with "FREESHIP", but they supposedly charge $15 for the free shipping with Shoprunner.
My wife's order (placed 4 days ago) still hasn't shipped. Argh. Anyone know if placing order to pick up in-store would be more likely to post immediately?
I am pretty sure you are only getting one $50 saks credit even if you have multiple personal platinum card. I tried using my Mercedes and Morgan Stanley platinums to spend two $50 purchase, but I only got one “great news” email after the purchase. I think Amex treats this benefits like American Express offer now (I.e. only one statement credit per person) .....
wrong, you get $50 for each. you can confirm enrollment via rep on chat if you have to. source: have earned credit across 6 different personal plats all linked on same account. two vanilla, mercedes, schwab, morgan stanley, and ameriprise.