AMEX Twitter Sync Promotion: How I Turned $180 at Best Buy Into $200 in Amazon Gift Certificates

After two years of churning credit cards for sign-up bonuses, I’ve amassed quite a collection of cards.  I’m almost embarrassed by how many I now have, but one great benefit of having so many cards is the ongoing promotions.  With some companies you might save a couple dollars here, or get a discount there, but one company stands above the rest when it comes down to promotions for current card members: American Express.

I have four different Amex cards and two of them will carry an annual fee starting next year.  Normally, I would just cancel any card that carries an annual fee but Amex’s latest slew of promotions has really got me thinking.  Most people know about small business saturday, but this summer Amex launched a huge promotion with Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.  Basically, the promotion requires you to sync each one of your cards to a separate social media account and either like, tweet or check-in to participating businesses.

Through these promotions I’ve been able to take advantage of some awesome free money deals.  All you need to participate is an Amex card, co-sponsored cards like the Citi Aadvantage AMEX and Costco AMEX will work, but prepaid cards won’t.  One of the more recent deals Amex offered(goes until 9/16/12) was a $20 statement credit on a $200 purchase at Best Buy.  Now at first I wasn’t too impressed with this offer because Best Buy tends to have some pretty jacked up prices already and the 10% savings would likely be negated by their inflated prices.  But I learned about a simple trick that allowed me to purchase Amazon gift cards at a 10% discount.  So here’s how it works.

With these promotions, once you sync your card and tweet the promotion code your card is enrolled.  You can buy anything you want at the participating business and as long as the final transaction amount is greater than the minimum requirement for the promotion.  I like using Twitter for these deals because the confirmation is usually instant and you’ll receive the statement credit within 2-3 days usually.  There’s no need to deal with explaining the promotion to the business(often times they’re unaware) or using any type of coupons.  It’s all done through Twitter and Amex.  In order to get your card enrolled, you need to:

• Sign up for a Twitter account
• Sync your American Express Card to your Twitter account(Click on the twitter icon in the upper right corner)
• You should receive a confirmation e-mail that the card ending in XXXXX has been synced with your twitter account(If you have multiple Amex cards you’ll need multiple twitter accounts so be sure to write down which account is synced to which card)
• Tweet using the designated hashtag for the deal(for this one it’s #AmexBestBuy20)
• You should receive a sync notification in the mentions section of your Twitter account within a minute or two

Once you’ve added the deal to your card, head over to the e-book section of Best Buy, where they actually sell gift cards for the Kindle.  Kindle gift cards can be redeemed for any item on Amazon.com so by purchasing $200 in Kindle gift cards you can immediately add these to your amazon account and you’ll receive a $20 statement credit on your Amex credit card bill from this promotion.  The Kindle gift cards work just like a regular Amazon gift card, only they say Kindle on them 🙂

I love Amazon and there’s nothing like coming home to a giant box of paper towels with free 2 day shipping and no sales tax.  In fact, I buy most of my household products on Amazon and a ton of other things so this promotion was perfect for me.  Alternatively, you could just buy a $200 Visa gift card and pay the $5.95 activation fee for a total profit ($20 SC – $5.95 fee) of $14.05.  This is only one of the many deals Amex has offered this summer.  There are tons more out there for you to explore.  Some might require a little more work than this but I think it’s a lot of fun getting free money, so enjoy.

Top Deals of the Summer

AMEX – Get $20 back when you spend $200 at Best Buy by tweeting #AmexBestBuy20

AMEX – Get $10 back on $50+ in Mall Gift Cards by tweeting #AmexMacerichMalls, #AmexSimonMalls

AMEX – Get $50 back when you spend $250 on Travelocity(hotel purchases only) by tweeting #AmexTravelocity

AMEX – Get $25 back when you spend $75 at Ticketmaster.com by tweeting $AmexTM25(I used this one to buy some good football tickets and re-sell them)

AMEX/Foursquare – Get $5 statement credit at basically any small business when you spend $10 by checking in and loading the special.  In your foursquare app, hit the explore tab and look for American Express Specials.

There’s plenty more on Amex’s website so check them out.

Readers, have you used any of these promotions this summer or do they seem like too much work?

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-Harry @ PF Pro