Update on the Amex / Amazon deal – points showing, gift cards OK, Prime OK, so jump in

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There was a huge response to my article on Monday about the fantastic new Amazon offer from American Express.

It is available for many – but not all – British Airways American Express, Amex Gold and Amex Platinum cardholders.

You will find this offer on the ‘Offers’ tab of your British Airways American Express / Amex Gold / Amex Platinum statement page online, or in the app.

There are a few versions. You will hopefully see some combination of:

Get 500 / 1,000 Avios / Membership Rewards points when you spend £25 at amazon.co.uk before 19th September using your BA Amex / Amex Gold / Platinum card

It isn’t clear who gets what and you may have got nothing if you are very unlucky.

It is limited to the first 20,000 people to register so I recommend you sign up immediately. You have until 19th September to make a purchase and have it post to your Amex account.

There was some confusion over the wording of the offer. It said “purchases made with Market Place Sellers, Amazon Prime or subscriptions to Amazon Prime” do not count. Secondary terms and conditions also implied that gift cards would not count, even though American Express has no idea what you bought.

I did a test purchase on my own Amazon account for a £25 gift card. I AM an Amazon Prime customer. Within 2 minutes of making the purchase I got an email from American Express saying “Congratulations, you have earned 500 bonus Avios – if your transaction meets the offer terms”.

The 500 bonus Avios have now posted to my account. See below (click to enlarge):

This means:

gift card purchases do count

even Amazon Prime customers still earn the bonus on gift cards

This offer should be a no-brainer for qualifying BA Amex / Amex Gold / Amex Platinum cardholders, especially if you have the 1,000 points version. £25 is a ludicrously low purchase limit for earning 1,000 Avios or Membership Rewards points.

As I found, purchases of Amazon e-gift cards count. These can be bought online via this link and added to your personal Amazon account via this page. The balance is used automatically on your next purchase.

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – December 2021 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit or charge card, here are our November 2021 recommendations based on the current sign-up bonus.

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the top current deals:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers.

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and free for a year Read our full review

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and a long list of travel benefits Read our full review

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending:

Barclaycard Select Cashback Credit Card

1% cashback and no annual fee Read our full review

Category

American Express Membership Rewards, British Airways American Express

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

Doug says:

9 Aug9 August 15:07

I had my offer manually added, I don’t see it under my offers, but went ahead and got a £25 topup in amazon, but no emails/vouchers so far. will chat about this later in the week, assuming they will be nice enough to manually add the points then. a lot hassle!!
MarkH says:

9 Aug9 August 15:08

OT – I want to pay off and then cancel my gf’s BACC – do i need to wait for the Avios to be moved across to her BAEC account before cancelling? Don’t want to lose them by cancelling too early.
- Genghis says:
  
  9 Aug9 August 15:51
  
  Wait for points to transfer to BAEC.
  - MarkH says:
    
    9 Aug9 August 16:05
    
    Thought that might be the case – thanks!
  - George says:
    
    10 Aug10 August 01:54
    
    Yawn
    - Genghis says:
      
      10 Aug10 August 06:06
      
      I thought I was responding to a genuine question here? Great value add George.
Phil says:

9 Aug9 August 15:14

The 20,000 offers may have gone now.
Phil says:

9 Aug9 August 15:15

For what it’s worth, both my BA and Gold were targeted. I have already been credited 1,000 Avios for a gift card on BA AMEX and have just purchased another with Gold. I am a prime subscriber.
mark2 says:

9 Aug9 August 15:59

re not getting an email when offer is redeemed: my wife did not get an email and the purchase is still stuck in pending (although other purchases the same day have moved down) but the 1,000 Avios have posted. This was goods purchased from Amazon.
- Polly says:
  
  9 Aug9 August 18:20
  
  Same here on our 3x cards. No email, points posted, gift cards bought. So don’t worry, people, if you got the offer, you will get the points, it seems once you spent the darn £25. On anything,Megan prime…As Rob says wait a day or so…
Geoff says:

9 Aug9 August 16:20

Anyone get a hint that this may be the end of call centre and chat staff being able to manually add offers to cards in the future at all? There was this one, and a few weeks ago the BA £100 back offer which both attracted people contacting Amex in droves to manually add otherwise targetted offers.
- mark2 says:
  
  9 Aug9 August 16:24
  
  Remember that there is a fixed number of people who can save the offer. I just spoke to Brighton (Plat) and they told me that that was the reason why they had stopped adding the Amazon offer manually.
Simon Schus says:

9 Aug9 August 16:24

I’ve seen a few notes about AMEX not being able to see what we purchase from a particular company, only that we have spent money from them.

I thought I’d chime in to highlight that they might just not display what they know about our purchases. On my US AMEX, I often purchase something and details about the product actually turn up. I”m not meaning the type of merchant (e.g. ‘hotels or accommodation’, ‘florist’, ‘financial services’, ‘groceries’) that is presumably hard coded to a particular merchant. Instead, I mean specific details about the products I purchased. For instance, on hotels… I’ve clicked the item and it comes up with details about the dates I’ve stayed (this is true of both prepaid stays, rather than just post-paid stays… which I think is important because the prepaid stays having the details highlights that they don’t just calculate the stay dates from the day of pre-authorisation to the day of the charge posting to the account). The same is true of airline tickets too albeit but that happens on my UK card too, and AMEX shows part of the the routing, my ticket number and the name of passengers (e.g. my wife’s name, my name, my parent’s name when I’ve booked travel for them using my card). Some information is flowing between, and it seems that hotels are one type of merchant where this is active. There is another type of product that I’ve noticed this on recently but I can’t remember.

I can’t see the hotel information with my UK card so perhaps it isn’t sent/collected with UK Data Protection Laws, or perhaps it just isn’t shown to us. Nonetheless, the capacity is there to transfer some data on items that we have purchased.
- Alan says:
  
  10 Aug10 August 19:58
  
  Flight details have always shown up on Amex statements here – I can’t remember re hotels. Never seen any details for Amazon purchases though (apart from Prime subscription, which goes through a different item).
Dragonfly says:

9 Aug9 August 16:46

I got three (each for 1000 points) – my gold & ba premium and hubby’s plat. Will probably buy some amazon gift cards, to be used later.