Yesterday, I wrote about discounts available to anyone via Spring from Capital One (no Capital One card necessary). In that post, I noted a discount doe Dell computers that offered “Member” pricing and 12% off — but that it didn’t excite me all that much. In response, Greg suggested a post about ways of Extreme Stacking Dell, which sounded like a great idea since there are so many ways to stack deals at Dell. Here are the ways I’d stack it. Have you stacked something additional? Let us know in the comments.
Business Platinum Dell Credits
The Business Platinum card from American Express ordinarily comes with a $100 credit for Dell purchases that can be used twice annually (once from January to June and once from July to December).
One nice thing about Dell is that they allow for easy split payment online. This can be useful if you have more than one Business Platinum card in your household: you could easily split payment over two or even three cards in order to use Dell credits from multiple cards on a single purchase.
Split payment can be particularly useful if the items you really want at Dell cost $200 or more. Keep in mind that you could take this approach with a friend who you trust will reciprocate: between January and June you split payment with a friend to buy something he or she wants and then between July and December the two of you split payment on something that you want. This team-up technique is going to require sharing your credit card numbers though, so I’d only recommend doing this with someone you trust.
Of course this year, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Amex has increased the Dell credit by adding an additional $100. That means cardholders each have $200 in total credits to use from July to December (if you have two Business Platinum cards in your household, you could therefore split tender to spend $400 that is rebated).
Amex Offers for Dell
If you’re planning to make a Dell purchase, keep a close eye on your Amex Offers – particularly on your Business Platinum card if you have one. Since Amex Offers can now only be synced to a single card, you’ll want to be strategic about syncing them.
For example, at the time of writing, I have multiple Dell offers synced to my wife’s Business Platinum card (all of which can be found in our Current Amex Offers database):
There is additionally a current offer to spend $599 or more and get 12,000 Membership Rewards points (also scheduled to expire 7/31/20). Unfortunately, I didn’t get that offer on the same Business Platinum card.
The good news is that these offers can stack and you can earn multiple offers on a single purchase. See the next section for a caution on stacking them.
Caution on stacking Amex Offers
I noted in the previous section that multiple Dell Amex Offers can be stacked, but there are some instances where cardholders have seen a clawback associated with this.
In 2019, there was also an offer good for 10% back that many people found on a Business Platinum card. It was therefore possible to make a small profit on a Dell purchase in a scenario like this:
- Make a purchase totaling $105 on a Business Platinum card synced with the 10%-back offer
- Get $10.50 back from the Amex Offer
- Get $100 back from the Business Platinum credit
- Totals: $105 paid, $110.50 rebated
Amex eventually decided that they didn’t like that scenario, and long after Amex had credited accounts for these offers (and in some cases even after cardholders had closed their accounts), Amex clawed back the $10.50 from the 10% offer. According to Dan’s Deals, this only happened on orders where the rebates turned a profit — in other words, if you spent more than $111 (and therefore Amex hadn’t given you back more than you had paid), there was no clawback.
I think that type of clawback is ridiculous given that it is entirely out of a cardholder’s control as to which credits Amex provides and that cardholder shouldn’t be faulted for buying an item that happened to cost $100. But it is worth keeping in mind that an offer that works out to be slightly profitable might cause a clawback down the line.
It’s worth noting that Dell even advertises several of these promotions together as being available to American Express Card Members with no explicit indication that they wouldn’t be stackable. This graphic comes directly from the Dell website promotions page:
I therefore think it is relatively safe to use offers together.
Stack a shopping portal
One nice thing about all of the above is that those Amex credits and offers stack nicely with a shopping portal. While Amex Offer terms sometimes suggest that you need to use a specific Amex-dedicated link to start your shopping trip, that isn’t true in practice. In fact, I’ve never visited that link they specify in the fine print and I’ve always triggered my Amex Offers by simply checking out through Dell.
Current shopping portal rates are very low at the time…
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