£5 back on £10+ spend at small shops & restaurants, with Amex, until 20th December!

American Express have once again brought back their Shop Small promotion for 2015. This year, you've got a fortnight to get the shopping / dining / drinking in, with it running from yesterday through to the 20th of December.

This year, it's "spend at least £10, get a £5 statement credit". The credit is once per store/restaurant, per card. That means that if you spend £11 one day, and return another to spend a tenner, you can get the credit again if you use a different card. That card could be a supplementary card too!

You do, however, need to register all of your cards first! For Amex Amex cards, if you log into your online account, you'll see it listed in the offers section. For others, eg Lloyds or MBNA, you'll need to follow the link from the Shop Small site to register. Only Amex Amex cards count for supplementary cards though, as only those have a different number.

Once you've registered, browse the (sadly quite often wrong) Shop Small map on their website to find where you can use the offer. Some shops/restaurants will be in the wrong place (maybe a few meters out, maybe a few towns out...), and their classifications are often iffy, but for your home town you should be fine to work it out!

Few things to note - some shops are taking part but aren't listed. If a shop has a American Express Shop Small poster up, it should be covered even if not listed. Most shops don't know there's the £5 credit going on, even if they know they're taking part in the Shop Small promotion. Most shops will be willing to split a bigger transaction onto multiple cards, especially at quiet times, but the odd one won't. If a shop is listed but doesn't actually take Amex, fret not! Drop Amex a secure message online, saying which shop/restaurant/pub didn't take Amex despite being listed, and include both the name and address. Tell them that you had to use a visa/mastercard instead, and they'll credit you the missing fiver. (They'll also promise to get the map updated, but don't hold your breath, mistakes from last year remain!)

 

I'm not normally a killjoy, but this promotion is next to useless for me. Living in a mainly rural area (with few shops of any kind), I travel into London daily, but don't/can't venture out from the office until the commute home.
I'm glad that it excites some people, but I will stick with the money back offers for larger retailers that seem to come along on a semi-regular basis.

 

Swing by a participating corner shop / wine shop on your way from the office home, and pick up a nice just-over-a-tenner bottle of wine / few bottles of beer, and enjoy them for a fiver once you're home?

(We've managed a half priced cafe lunch, a few half price stocking fillers, quite a few half price glasses of wine, and a few credits for places where we couldn't use Amex despite being on the map. Do live somewhere metropolitan though!)