Lots of American Express cardholders have been targeted for the iTunes offer: Spend $5 at iTunes, get $5 back. A co-worker of mine told me that he currently has a large gift card credit on his iTunes account and that he was unable to take advantage of the $5 statement credit offer because iTunes did not allow him to pay with a credit card when he had a gift card credit on his account. If you’re experiencing this problem, here is a way around it:
- Create a second iTunes account or use a friend’s/relative’s account.
- Add your American Express card as the preferred payment method for the iTunes account.
- Open up iTunes on your computer. Go to the iTunes store, log out, then log in with the secondary account credentials.
- Make a purchase of at least $5. Your item will download onto YOUR iTunes library, since you’re doing this from your computer.
- Once the purchase is made, remove the payment information from the account, log out, and log back in with your primary iTunes account information.
- Enjoy a $5 statement credit from American Express.
Before you do all of this, you’ll of course have to sign-up for the offer by logging into your American Express account and clicking “save” next to the $5 iTunes offer. With the new Amex Offers site you can also take advantage of these offers by syncing your account to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms.
There’s one other, easier method I used – gift some purchases to yourself: http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/9737/5002
You’ll have to send the gift to an email address other than the one tied to your account, but once you get the email you can redeem the code they send on your main account.
Gifts apparently always charge your credit card on file. I used this method to get my credit, working around a gift card balance on my account.
I did something similar to what Jay did.
I settled for 50% off. You can change your credit card info, then send a $10 gift card to your own email address ($10 is the lowest denomination gift card, hence 50% off). You find this option on the main page of the iTunes Store labeled “Send Gifts”. Doing this charges your credit card, once done just change your card in your account settings and repeat until done.
The benefit of this method is that you can choose what to buy at a later time since you receive iTunes credit for future purchases. The downside is that you are only receiving 50% off, rather than the full 100%. I only had this offer on two cards and use iTunes quite frequently so a $20 credit will be easy to use in a reasonable time frame.
Great tips. Thanks for sharing, guys!
I accidentally sent a gift to my own email address (the one that is attached to the iTunes account with the credit) and discovered that it worked that way too. What I was actually aiming for was to use my credit to buy a gift, but ended up just doubling my balance. You can’t use your credit to buy gift cards. Haha oops…well got my $5 anyways. 😉