105 bottles of wine for around $100

I’m sure you’ve heard of AMEX Small Business Saturday.  2 years ago, the deal was $25 off $25 for every AMEX card.  At the time, I only had 9 AMEX cards (I don’t think Serve cards and Serve subaccounts were out then.)  I went on to their web site and found out that a little unknown restaurant near me, Din Tai Fung, <end sarcasm>qualified as a small business.  So I brought my wife there and bought 9 $25 gift cards, thus giving me $225 of free and delicious xiao long bao.  Unfortunately, I keep forgetting to bring the gift cards and still have 4-5 still today.  Thank goodness gift cards stopped charging non-usage fees.

Anyway, in 2013, AMEX realized $25 was too rich and cut the offer down to just $10 off $10.  My wife and I were headed to Hawaii, and so I missed out on it.  I don’t remember how many cards I had at the time, but like I said, $10 wasn’t compelling enough for me.

This year, AMEX upped the offer to 3 swipes of $10 off $10, and so you’d save $30 for every AMEX qualified card.  I had 35 AMEX cards at this point.  However, we were headed to the Maldives, and so I wouldn’t be here.  It kept bugging me that I’d miss out on nearly $1,000 of free money (35 x $300.)  I had read online that someone scored a ton of bottles of wine last year, and since my wife loves wine, I thought I could buy a lot of wine.  I also looked at restaurants, but I felt that they would be too busy on a Saturday to put up with my shenanigans.  So I found a local wine shop that qualified for AMEX Small Business Saturday.

I used to live near the wine shop who also had a restaurant.  My wife and I would go to their wine tastings, and so when I showed up there the week before AMEX SBS, the owner recognized me.  After exchanging pleasantries, I asked him if he had heard of AMEX SBS; he said he did, but I could tell later that he didn’t.  I then explained the 3 swipes of $10 off $10 this year.  I then told him that I’d be out of town, and if I could leave my credit card with him and have him do the 3 swipes on SBS.  He said, “Sure, I’ll be glad to take your money.”  Great!  So I walked around the very small store to see which bottles were around the $10 range.  After a couple of minutes, I walked back up to the front and asked him, “You know how I said I had 1 AMEX card?  Well, I actually have THIRTY FIVE CARDS.”  His eyes got big as he gasped “Oh.”  He then said, “Sure, that shouldn’t be a problem.  We’re usually not that busy.”  I thanked him and told him I’d be back in the middle of the week to drop off the cards and bring my wife so she can pick out the wines.

On Tuesday, we dropped by the store to drop off the 35 cards.  While my wife was picking out the wines, I then explained to him again that he had to swipe each card 3 times for a total of 105 swipes.  He thought it was just 35 swipes of $30, but he was still okay with it since he volunteered his wife to do it.  I then further complicated things by telling him that I would need to take 5 cards with me (I had the $75 off $400 offers on 5 cards that I was going to use at the Conrad Maldives) and whether it’d be okay if I could write down the credit card numbers and him punch them in [instead of swiping.]  Once again, he was okay with it.  He did mention to me that he had to pay higher swipe fees on those transactions because punching in the numbers incurred a higher fee than a physical swipe (that was new to me).  I then complicated it even more by telling him that each swipe had to be a different amount in case AMEX rejects the 2nd and 3rd swipes because of a duplicate transaction or something.  He had wanted to give me a 10% discount (usually for buying 6 or more bottles), but a $9.99 wine minus 10% plus 9.5% tax is below $10.  I told him that wouldn’t work and that he shouldn’t give me the discount at all.  I’m fine with paying $10.xx for each bottle since after the $10 discount, I’d be paying less than $1 per bottle.

When we left, I told my wife I was worried that this was not going to go smoothly.  The owner is an old gentleman, and while I wrote down all the disclaimers, I was still nervous.  Fast forward to that Saturday, I woke up in the Maldives and saw all the “Congrats!  You just used your AMEX offer” emails.  Gooooooooaaaaaaaallllllll!

When we went to pick up the wine this weekend, I saw his wife for the first time.  I thanked her for her time, and she told me a young couple showed up on SBS and sheepishly asked if they could buy 3 bottles of wine rung up separately.  The wife asked, “For AMEX Small Business Saturday?”  The couple laughed and came back with a couple more AMEX cards.  After I picked up the wine, the owner tells me, “See you next year?”  I said, “Sure, and I’ll have even more cards by then!”  =)