[Expired] [YMMV] AmEx Offers Shop Small: Spend $10 & Get $10 Back, Up To 5X ($50 Total Free)

Deal has now ended.

The Offer

Direct Link to offer

American Express is offering their annual Shop Small promotion. This year the offer is:

  • Spend $10+ and get $10 back, up to 5 times when you Shop Small at small businesses. Total of $50 possible.

Here’s the link to the Shop Small map. It might work at other places not shown on the map as well.

The Fine Print

  • CARD ELIGIBILITY: You must first add offer to an eligible Card through Amex Offers to enroll in the offer and then use that same enrolled Card to make qualifying purchases. Only U.S.-issued American Express® Cards are eligible. Limit of 1 enrolled Card per Card Member. Your enrollment of an eligible Card for this offer extends only to that Card. After you enroll an eligible Card, you will not be able to enroll a second eligible Card that you may have.
  • QUALIFYING PURCHASES: A “qualifying purchase” means a purchase made at a business location on the Shop Small Map in the US or US territories available, at americanexpress.com/networkshopsmall, or the Online Directory, available at americanexpress.com/shopsmallonline, with your enrolled Card or with Pay with Points linked to an enrolled Card on or before 12/31/2021 in accordance with these terms.
  • The following do NOT count as a qualifying purchase: fees or interest charges, cash advances, purchases of traveler’s checks, purchases or reloading of prepaid Cards, purchases of any cash equivalents or purchases made in foreign currencies.
  • You may not receive a statement credit if we receive inaccurate information or are otherwise unable to identify your purchase as qualified for the offer. For example, you may not receive the statement credit if (a) the merchant uses a third-party to sell their products or services except that qualifying purchases made through Resy.com and the Resy mobile app will qualify for the offer; or (b) the merchant uses a third-party to process or submit your transaction to us (e.g., using mobile or wireless card readers); or (c) you choose to make a purchase using a third-party payment account or make a purchase using a mobile or digital wallet. Note that we may not receive information about your qualifying purchase from merchant until all items from your qualifying purchase have been provided/shipped by merchant. Statement credit may be reversed if qualifying purchase is returned/cancelled. If we do not receive information that identifies your transaction as qualifying for the offer, you will not receive the statement credit.

Our Verdict

Free $50 if you get this one. The above link is working for registering third-party Amex cards (should work for Bluebird/Serve cards as well?), but for regular Amex cards it just redirects you to login and find the offer which isn’t available right now. Hopefully they’ll roll out this offer directly in the AmEx Offers section of the AmEx website sometime in the coming days.

Hat tip to GC Galore

View more Amex offers here & if you have any questions about American Express offers then read this post.

View Comments (134)

      • thx, but I do not know of exactly 10.00 will work because it is not greater than 10 and "$10+" is stated in the t&c, I tbelieve.

        • Yes, I did exactly $10 on 4 of my 5 transactions and received credit on all of them. BTW, "$10+" literally means $10 or more.

    • has anyone received the credit with an exact $10.00 charge? The small business I want to spend at offers only a $10gc & I do not want 2

  • I just went to register my Serve card using the link in this post. After typing in my card info and clicking submit, I got the following response: "Our systems are not responding at this time, please try again later." Anyone else have this problem? Any other way to register my Serve card for the offer?

    • They use that as a catch all for all things erroneous. It probably means that the Serve card was not supposed to be added since this was meant for third party issuers.

  • Does anyone know who we can contact to try to get credits that weren't issued but should be? I bought at a small local business outside my home area early in November using Wells Fargo and haven't received the credits. Two purchases made locally earned the credits.

    • Is the business listed on the AMEX Small Business map? If so, you can try to do the online chat function and have them research this further. Other than that, there is generally no recourse although the rep generally has the discretion to make courtesy credits. For non-AMEX issued AMEX cards, you most likely would have to call the number on the back of your cards although they probably will not know what this is since it's not a credit issued by them but by the AMEX network - you probably wouldn't have a lot of options in that case if they refuse to give you a credit.

  • I just noticed my name and home address on the shop small map. I think it's from signing up for a Kabbage account for that bonus. Whoops.

      • Not sure if serious, but there may be a gaming angle here. I didn't get the Amex Offer, so I can't test this out.

        https://www.kabbage.com/payments/

        Swipe fee is 2.25%, and you can set up a customized URL where people can pay you with credit card. It goes to a linked checking account that you choose. You even get to pick your own MCC. I didn't bother going all the way through setup because, like I said, I don't have the Amex Offer.

        I wouldn't bother putting any real volume through this or trying to abuse the MCC thing, but they probably won't care about a handful of $10 transactions. Based on the fact that they threw me on the Shop Small map, I bet it'll trigger the offer.

  • The Terms are not clear to me:
    "Limit of 1 enrolled Card per Card Member. Your enrollment of an eligible Card for this offer extends only to that Card. After you enroll an eligible Card, you will not be able to enroll a second eligible Card that you may have."
    1. If there are two cards (the 2nd is an authorized user) for the same account (same card number) could they both sign up?
    2. With "second eligible card", I assume that refers to the same card issuer?

    • This is just a long explanation of how Amex offers work. What are they saying here is that if you have been targeted on multiple cards, you can only enroll once per person (by SSN). If you enrolled on an eligible card, it will disappear from all your other cards if they were eligible. Your AUs will get their own offers, but there is no guarantee that they will get targeted for a specific offer.

      • @David,
        This does not apply in my case, and the link above, as it is not for a regular Amex offer but for other institutions who issues AmExp card (e.g. US Bank, AAFCU & Wells Fargo).

        If there are two cards for the same account (the 2nd is an authorized user with same card number) could both persons sign up?

        • Yes, as long as each AU has a different SSN it should add properly. Otherwise, it would error out if you try to add it (or unless they have not sent the SSN information - or have invalid information on file)...

          • @guest_1283301 (David), It didn't work :-(. P1 is primary and P2 authorized user on a USB AmEx card. P1 signed up for the offer first. When P2 later tried to sign up for the offer the message stated that the card had already been enrolled ...:-(.

          • Did your issuer issue cards with the same number? I believe many of them do... That probably explains that error.

          • @guest_1283301 ,
            Yes, same card number but we registered with different names (and Emails) of course. I guess that they only look at the card number.

          • Ah, that explains it. Official AMEX cards issued by AMEX have different card numbers for AUs, which then allow you to add different offers per card account. If your issuer does not separate the cards, then you could only have one set of offers since there is only one account number.

  • I got the following offer: Get a one-time $15 statement credit by using your enrolled eligible Card to spend a minimum of $20 in one or more purchases online at the Shop Small® x ByBlack Amex holiday curation powered by SHOWFIELDS at shopsmall.showfields.com by 12/31/2021. See terms.

  • Heads up @chucksithe Looks like they put out a (worse) but similar offer for regular Amex cards, spend $15 get $5 back, up to 2x, expires 12/31. Got this on 2 of my 4 cards.

  • I have a Macy's Amex card and have always operated that from Macy's website. I would like to add the Shop Small Amex Offer but am having the hardest time creating an online profile for my Macy's Amex card. When I go through the link offered near the top of the page and enter my card details, it gives me an error message.

    Anybody know how to resolve this or get around this to set up an Amex login for my Macy's card.

    Thanks

    • You don't (and can't) set up a profile on the AMEX site for a non-AMEX issued card like Macy's, and I have no idea what link you're clicking on that's asking you to do that. You just enter the card information to load the offer to the card.

      Click on Direct Link to offer above.