EDIT: It’s worth noting that the Xexec portals no longer accept American Express. Nonetheless, making good use of Amex Offers as explained below, is still an excellent way to save on purchases.
Hopefully, you are all familiar by now with the perks and benefits of the Xexec shopping discount portal and the savings you can achieve by using it. Today I am going to outline a method to recoup even more of your spend as well as well as earning miles and points from your purchases for ‘triple dip’ savings and earnings.
American Express offers a feature called Amex Offers. You may be vaguely familiar with this term from the Shop Small promotion back in December. A colleague may well have regaled you with stories of how he ran around for 2 weeks with 15 Amex Cards getting everything at half price and now has enough stamps to last him until 2026. At the time you quite rightly shook your head, wrote him off as slightly barmy and moved on.
The concept behind the Shop Small madness is a yearly Amex promotion that gave you £5 back for every £10 you spent at a qualifying ‘Small Shop’ for a 2 week period in December 2016.
However, there are actually also opportunities for discounts year round that American Express offer to cardmembers. These are also open to people with Lloyds, TSB and Barclays-issued Amex cards as I will explain shortly.
There are actually 2 key perks I want to highlight regarding Amex Offers. The first is the standalone value that these offers can add.
For example, for the last few months I have had the following offer from Hilton available on my British Airways Premium Plus Card (BAPP):
This can be used very strategically to offset the cost of a weekend break away. If you had the offer on two of your cards you could also split your hotel bill across your cards for a total of £100 off.
Although the terms imply that the £250+ spend must be in one go, in practice many people have reported the £50 back triggering on a cumulative spend of £250+. You would lose nothing by saving the offer to your card even if you have no immediate plans to travel or spend that amount on one stay.
The second major perk of Amex Offers is to combine them with other discounts.
This means the equation would look something like this:
Discount from Xexec shopping portal + Amex offer + earn loyalty points = Triple dip
To explain what I mean I thought it would be an excellent idea to look at some of the current or recent offers that I have seen across my cards to see how the ‘triple-dip’ looks in practice and maximum savings can be achieved.
House of Fraser
There is an offer of £10 back when you spend £50+ in-store at House of Fraser by 07/05/17 available on my BAPP card.
There is also currently 9% off when you buy a House of Fraser e-voucher via the Xexec portal.
Say you needed £100 of items from House of Fraser the equation would look like this:
- Order an instant £50 House of Fraser e-voucher. You would pay only £45.50.
- Pay for your first £50 of items on BAPP card, triggering £10 back
- Pay for your second £50 of items with your e-voucher.
- Net spend = £85.50 + 129 Avios
Monarch
Last week, a £20 off when you spend £200 with Monarch offer appeared on my wife’s Preferred Rewards Gold card which I used to book some short-haul summer flights.
My equation looked like this:
- £300 spent
- 0.6% back from cashback portal
- £20 back from Amex offer
- 600 Membership Rewards points earned – you earn double points on spend made directly with airlines.
However, you are sometimes better off not triple dipping in order to save the maximum amount. Here is a case in point:
Debenhams
Via the Xexec discount portal, there is currently 3% cashback being offered on purchases at Debenhams*. On my BAPP there is also an offer showing this morning for 3% back purchases at Debenhams.
By clicking through the portal and paying with my BAPP the final equation would look like this:
- £100 spent
- 3% back from Xexec cashback portal
- 3% back from Amex Offer
- Net spend = £94.30 and roughly 145 Avios (earned from the spend on my card).
Alternatively, you can buy and pay with a Debenhams 9% off e-voucher from the Xexec site. The equation would now look like this:
- Purchase £100 e-voucher. You would pay just £91
- Use e-voucher to pay at Debenhams
- Net spend = £91 and 137 Avios
As you can see in this instance it was clearly better not to use the Amex Offer and to simply use the Xexec e-voucher option.
HOW IT WORKS
There a number of things to be aware of when using Amex Offers and or cashback:
- You must save the relevant Amex Offer to your card before spending at a retailer.
- The ‘money back’ from Amex Offers appears in the form of a statement credit on your card account. This will usually appear within 5 days but in theory, this can take up to 90 days.
- Offers will vary across different cards and cardmembers as retailers attempt to target specific market segments.
- You should always read the Amex Offer Terms and Cashback T&C’s to check for exclusions.
- American Express cardholders can access Amex Offers via their account on the Amex website or within the app.
If you have an American Express card issued by Lloyds/Barclays etc you can still access many of these offers. You can view available offers and register them to your card by visiting the Amex Connect website.
VERDICT
Amex Offers are a great way to save money just by doing your regular shopping. The offers are traditionally at their strongest around Christmas time when offers such as 20% off at Selfridges tend to appear. By combining these offers with cashback or e-vouchers via our portal you can end up paying far less than the listed price for your goods with minimal effort.
*Cashback is never guaranteed and should always be treated as an added bonus.