Has ‘£5 back on a £20 Amazon purchase’ appeared on your American Express accounts?

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American Express and Amazon have launched another of their occasional offers. And it is a generous one.

If you are targeted, you will receive £5 cashback on your next £20+ purchase on amazon.co.uk made with your American Express card.

To see if you are targeted, you need to log into your online American Express account and look at the offers tab for EACH card you have. You should also look under any supplementary cards which you have registered.

If you see the Amazon offer, click ‘Save To Card’. The offer is “only” valid for the first 74,000 people who save it.

We have the offer on:

my Platinum
my wife’s supplementary Platinum
my wife’s Gold

I do not have it on:

my BA Premium Plus
my Starwood Amex
my wife’s Starwood Amex (which now has no offers at all)
my wife’s BA Premium Plus

…. which means £15 of free money for us.

Here are the official rules, but it may not work this way in practice:

Offer intended for UK Cardmembers only.
Offer only available online at www.amazon.co.uk.
Offer only applies to spend made in Great British Pound (GBP) on the Card to which the offer is saved, including an American Express Card loaded into a mobile payment wallet.
Offer does not apply to spend on other Cards you might hold and is not valid for transactions made using Payment Aggregators.
Only one £5 statement credit per UK Card.
Rewarded credit may be reversed if qualifying transaction is refunded or cancelled.
Offer only available to the first 74,000 Cardmembers who save the offer to their Card.
Credit should appear on your billing statement within 5 days from qualifying spend but may take up to 90 days from 9 December 2018.
Offer not valid on orders paid on finance.
Offer is only intended for the targeted recipient of this offer.
Spend must be billed to your Card account by 9 December 2018 to be eligible for this offer. If Amazon does not charge your Card during this period, e.g. because of a delay in dispatching your goods, you may not be eligible for this offer.
Offer not valid on purchases made with Amazon Prime or subscriptions to Amazon Prime.
Offer only valid on orders delivered to the UK.

I am unsure about the ‘not valid on purchases made with Amazon Prime’ rule. I don’t know how American Express can tell the difference. That said, for 100% security you may want to have it delivered normally instead.

Do gift card purchases work?

The easiest way of triggering the bonus should be to purchase a £20 e-gift card, emailed to yourself and then applied to your account.

It should also work if you top-up your Amazon account with £20 of credit. Topping up your account means that you end up with a £20 balance at Amazon and, next time you buy something, the £20 is used first before your credit card is charged for the balance.

I ordered a £20 e-gift card for myself and it appeared to work. I got an immediate confirmation from American Express that I had triggered the offer ‘if your transaction meets the offer terms’. I should know in a few days if the £5 credit will be applied and will report back.

You can buy an e-gift card for yourself, or top up your balance, via this page of amazon.co.uk.

The Amazon home page is here.

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: