American Express gift cards up to 2.25% cashback TODAY ONLY

I got an email this morning that Top Cashback is offering 2.25% cashback on American Express business gift cards today only (Wednesday December 10th). – if you don’t have a Top Cashback account, my referral link is here

The important thing to note is that cash back is limited to cards of $200 and under.  If you buy gift cards in larger denominations, you will NOT earn any cashback.  Note also that you can NOT load American Express gift cards directly to Bluebird / Serve – you’ll need to either do regular spending with them, or use them to buy Visa / Mastercard gift cards in order to load them to Bluebird / Serve.

Is this worth doing?

In the “good old days”, these kinds of bonuses were one of the big staples of manufactured spending.  You might buy a $2000 American Express gift card, get ~$50 in cash back, which would more than offset the purchase fees for 4 $500 Visa gift cards.

But now, given there is a purchase fee AND a shipping fee on these American Express gift cards, it doesn’t generally make sense to do.

But, many people have an American Express gift cards Amex Offer for $10 off a $200 purchase, so $10 off from Amex sync offer plus $4.50 cashback

Also American Express is offering no purchase fees on American Express gift cards through 12/31 with an online coupon code, though there are reports that will invalidate your cashback from TopCashback, so you’ll have to decide which is more lucrative.  Unless you have the free shipping plan, I’d probably use the coupon (to waive the $8.95 shipping charge) rather than getting $4.50 cashback, but if you signed up for the free shipping plan in the “glory days” of buying American Express gift cards, today’s the day to use those Amex Offers!