How I made £108 using my Amex Platinum Business £200 ‘Business Bundle’ credit

Back in May, American Express rolled out a number of generous cashback offers for holders of American Express Business Platinum.

One of these, which is still running, was called ‘Business Bundle’:

You received £200 to spend online with Currys PC World, Carphone Warehouse, Google Store or O2 Business.

How does the ‘Business Bundle’ deal work?

It wasn’t that simple though.

You get TEN x £20 statement credits, which trigger on separate purchases of £20+ at any of these stores.  It is ONLY valid for online purchases.

You CANNOT buy 1 x £200 item and get £200 back.

To be honest, between May and November I ignored this offer. With time running out, however, I didn’t want to leave any money on the table.

Currys PC World (home page here) was the most interesting place to look for deals.  There are lots of household appliances, video games, smart toys etc and EVERYTHING comes with free UK delivery.

Currys PC World has a few things around the £20 mark. For example, if you’ve got a coffee machine, they have pods with free delivery – see here.

What was my plan?

In order to spend 10 x £20 I needed a better plan. I decided to resell console games. Whilst eBay is an option, it is a bit of a faff – especially when you have 10 to sell.

Here are the console games that Currys sells online.

Instead I decided to sell them to CeX, a chain of 380 UK stores which buys and sells second hand games and other electronics. There is very likely to be one near you.

CeX is easy to use. They publish their buy and sell prices online. There is no haggling. You can arrange the sale online via ‘Drop & Go’ and then either post the goods or, as I did, drop them off at your nearest shop. You are paid by bank transfer.

What did I buy?

The key thing, of course, was to buy 10 games which costs as near to £20 as I could get. I also wanted ones which had a decent CeX resale value.

I ordered two games per day over five days. This may not have been necessary but I didn’t want to risk Currys bundling up two separate orders into one American Express charge. In reality I doubt this could happen because Currys using an external payment processor.

I decided that each game should cost at least, but very close to, £20. I didn’t want to risk buying multiple items which totalled £20 in case one went out of stock and was refunded, leaving me with a sub-£20 transaction and no cashback.

It doesn’t take long to look at the few games costing around £20 and then looking up their resale price at CeX. This is what I ended up with:

• 4 x Playstation 4 – Minecraft Dungeons: Hero @ £22 – CeX purchase price £14

• 4 x Playstation 4 – Streets of Rage 4 @ £21 – CeX purchase price £10

• 2 x Playstation 4 – Avengers @ £23 – CeX purchase price £15

Note the the Minecraft game above has now fallen to £15 which Avengers has come off special offer and is back to £45. I made my purchases in mid November. You can see the current prices here.

American Express paid the cashback within 24 hours of the original charges hitting my card. See here:

Here’s an important thing to remember

Some Nintendo Switch games are sold as digital downloads. This means that Currys sends you a plastic box, but all that is inside it is a code which allows you to download the game.

For obvious reasons, CeX does not buy these. Do NOT buy any Nintendo Switch games where the ‘Product features’ on the Currys website include the words ‘Download code’.

How much money did I make?

I made less than I was expecting.

Streets of Rage was selling for £14 when I ordered them but had fallen to £10 by the time I came to sell. Avengers was £22 but had fallen to £15. This reduced my profit by £30.

Note that you must drop off your stock within three days of placing your ‘sell’ order so you cannot lock in the price at the time you order from Currys. They are slow at delivering – each took around five days.

My total expenditure on games was £218 on which I received £200 cashback from American Express. My total expense was therefore £18.

I sold the games for £126 to CeX.

My profit was £108.

The total work involved was minimal, although I was lucky in that there is a CeX store near me. That said, I could have posted them off for a modest postage charge.

If you have this offer on American Express Business Platinum, you might want to try something similar. I would act sooner rather than later as CeX demand will be far stronger this side of Christmas.

Here are the console games which Currys sells.

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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:

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.

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: