£25 Amex cashback with London Restaurant Festival – and how to exploit it

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The London Restaurant Festival is back, running from October 8th to October 27th.

American Express is again sponsoring the festival, and is offering £25 cashback on your statement when you make 2 x £25 purchases as participating restaurants.

You need to register your card in advance at this site. It seems that only Amex-issued cards are accepted, not MBNA or Lloyds cards.

You might think that you won’t get much for £25 at any of the participating restaurants – although a few pubs seem to be included, and I am pretty sure that Amex won’t know the difference between food and beer spend.

If you want to take full advantage of it, this is probably the best way to approach it:

If you and your partner each have an Amex card, you should both register for the offer and split your bill as long as each payment is over £25.

If you were very aggressive, you could ask to pay the bill over three or four cards, even for just two people. (A cash tip may help here!). Keep each payment over £25.

You could even ask to split the bill and then pay both bills with the same card! That would trigger the £25 statement credit immediately. However, if you do this I would make two unequal payments. Amex may think it is an error if two identical charges are made on the same card within a minute of each other.

Gift vouchers are another potential opportunity. D&D, the ex-Conran restaurant group, sells vouchers in its outlets. They even do £25 vouchers! You could purchase a number of £25 vouchers in separate transactions (two per Amex card) and then use them in one go for a half-price meal. If you being really tight / smart, you could wait until the Evening Standard £15-£25 D&D meal promotion comes around again and spend the vouchers then.

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Category

American Express Gold card, American Express Platinum card, British Airways and Avios, Marriott Bonvoy American Express

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Rob says:

13 Oct13 October 07:19

Thanks for that. The rules of the promotion send you to a different link. I have updated the article.
squills says:

13 Oct13 October 07:30

When a registered Cardmember spends £25 or more on two separate occasions at any participating restaurants…

I wouldn’t expect Amex to honour the 2 x £25 transactions at the same restaurant, on the same card, a few mins apart. That’s the same occasion in my eyes.
- Rob says:
  
  13 Oct13 October 11:09
  
  Fair point. My guess is that their IT cannot detect that, but there is clearly an element of risk.
JQ says:

13 Oct13 October 07:35

“Amex may think it is an error if two identical charges are made on the same card within a minute of each other.”

I frequently do this when booking flights (identical prices for 2 tickets but differing in the detail e.g. the exact dates / RFS tickets all cost the same / YQ on longer redemptions etc) and Amex has never said anything or blocked anything, except once when apparently I managed to spend £500 on a new card before activating it
- Alan says:
  
  13 Oct13 October 07:37
  
  Although with flights Amex also get eticket numbers, flight dates, destination as part of the transaction info so they would appear different even with the same amounts.
- squills says:
  
  13 Oct13 October 07:37
  
  And Amex often do exactly that on your statement even if you paid for tickets in 1 transaction, ie they split the statement debit by ticket/ passenger so you end up with identical debits on the same day. Probably to justify the £5 fee?
Tom H says:

13 Oct13 October 07:48

I split a £200 bill for 3 people at Skylon on Thursday between 8 different Amex cards.

Anyone beat this?
- Dave R says:
  
  13 Oct13 October 20:47
  
  You must be very proud.
  - squills says:
    
    13 Oct13 October 20:50
    
    lol
    
    No doubt said no tip as well, despite the super service!
Barry says:

13 Oct13 October 07:50

Just wondering if it works if you buy vouchers from the D and D website?
- Dan says:
  
  13 Oct13 October 10:00
  
  I’d be interested to know this as well. If you bought x2 £25 vouchers in two seperate transactions would that trigger the bonus?
  - Rob says:
    
    13 Oct13 October 11:04
    
    No, it won’t. You would need to visit a restaurant in person.
    
    It would only work if, for some odd reason, all D&D restaurants used the same payment coding (ie they all said D&D on the statement and not the restaurant name). I very much doubt that is the case.
Paul says:

13 Oct13 October 08:02

Totally off-topic, but Raffles do you have any info about a return of the good SPG amex signup bonus this autumn? I’m holding off a big purchase for a few weeks in the hope it may come back in time.
- Rob says:
  
  13 Oct13 October 11:06
  
  Historically it launches last week of October or first week of November. I only get 48 hours advance warning on the odd occasion when I do get told.
Mark B says:

13 Oct13 October 08:03

I got the £15 Morrisons credit even though after linking the offer to my card I didn’t use it, AMEX wrote to say they were paying out because they had been some IT issues with those who tried to apply it
- AndyGWP says:
  
  13 Oct13 October 12:07
  
  I’ve had a “PREMIER INN – Spend £100 or more and get £20 back” – don’t know if its targeted but could be worth people looking out for 🙂
  - Rob says:
    
    13 Oct13 October 12:23
    
    If it was properly targeted I doubt it would have gone to Platinum card holders, which it has 🙂
    - Dan says:
      
      13 Oct13 October 12:43
      
      I’ve also had a Ryanair offer £10 back when you make a booking, although doesn’t seem to mention a minimum spend. Some potentially good deals such as leeds to dublin – currently on sale for £9.99 – making you 1 pence profit?!
      - Rob says:
        
        13 Oct13 October 14:25
        
        That would work OK, definitely. There was no minimum spend for the Ryanair offer.
    - gnarlyoldgoatdude says:
      
      13 Oct13 October 13:18
      
      I think I know what you’re getting at, but “low cost” options such as Ryanair and Premier Inn can still be surprisingly expensive. Every little helps.
flood says:

13 Oct13 October 08:26

MBNA and Lloyds issued Amex’s are fine as per the T&C’s:

“An “Eligible Card” is a valid American Express card issued in the UK by American Express Services Europe Limited, Lloyds Bank plc, TSB Bank plc or MBNA Europe Bank Limited. Prepaid cards, gift cards and corporate cards are not eligible”