There was an AMEX Offer lately (maybe it still works) where you could get $25 off a $50 purchase (3 times) at Smart & Final grocery stores. I had never heard of them, which meant they weren’t in the Seattle area, so I decided to pass on the deal. I had read they were on the West coast, so figured they were in California. Anyway, I would have gone about my merry way, but decided to read Doctor of Credit’s daily newsletter post about the deal (quick aside – you should subscribe to his daily newsletter. He knows every deal out there while I post more about experiences than actual deals.) In the newsletter, he mentioned that another blogger found out they sold gift cards. Here’s the list of gift cards that they sell. There are some nice gas station gift cards on there, AMEX cards, Amazon cards, etc. All useful stuff at 50% off. Now if you only have 2 AMEX cards, at $75 per card, that’s not really worth your time. However, if you have 37 cards (due to Serve subaccounts qualifying for AMEX Offers), then 37 * $75 = $2,775! Now that’s worth a day/weekend trip down to SFO or LAX! So moral of post – just because you don’t recognize an AMEX offer deal, ask yourself if the store sells gift cards. Second moral – when you’ve signed up Serve subaccounts, make sure you actually register the cards and have them connected to a Twitter account so you don’t pass up a gold mine like this. =)
I’ll write a post about my field trip once I find some saver availability for a weekend day trip to Los Angeles. I found a perfect Saturday morning to Sunday night trip for San Francisco, but that city only has 8 stores while there are 3 dozen stores around Los Angeles. I’ll need to do 111 swipes total and will probably limit myself to 10 swipes per store, so I’d need 10 stores to fully maximize the deal. Plus, Alaska has more flights in and out of LAX than SFO.
I would think twice about this, many Smart and Final stores are now cracking down on using credit cards to purchase gift cards and as for using authorized user cards from subaccounts or cards not in your name, forget it. They are requiring ID for all gift card purchases and checking the ID to the name on the card.
That’s what I’ve been reading. This sounds like store policy instead of hard coded, so I may luck out with a friendly cashier/store. There’s 40 in the LA area, so my odds are good. I’m more worried about them being out of stock on the good gift cards.