Category: Gift Cards

  1. Giftcards.com’s promotion that was originally 5% back and set to expire on June 17 has risen from the dead. The current zombie variant is 10% back on up to $1,500 in $100 Visa gift cards with promo code SUMMER or YAYSUMMER through tomorrow evening.

    Giftcards.com remains absent from airline portals, but it’s still available via Rakuten and the Capital One Shopping. The Capital One mobile app almost always has the highest rate. These are Pathward gift cards.
  2. Kroger.com has $10 off of $150 or more in Visa and Mastercard gift cards with promo code JUNE2023 through Wednesday evening, but unfortunately the limit is one per account. You will earn fuel points which adds another $10 off or so if you can use the points.

    These are US Bank gift cards.
  3. There are a few offers that combine for a great deal at Staples this week:

    – Fee free $200 Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit eight per transaction
    – A Chase offer for 10% back at Staples up to $220 in spend through July 10

    These are Pathward gift cards. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. The Capital One Venture card has a 100,000 points (effectively $1,000) after $5,000 in spend in three months. Note that you’ll be automatically denied for this card if you have a Venture X personal card, but the jury is still out on the business Venture X.
  5. Meijer MPerks has a promotion for 50,000 MPerks points with the purchase of $250 or more in many third party gift cards (but especially Apple), limit 50,000 points per account.

    Scale this one with multiple MPerks accounts.

The moment the giftcards.com SUMMER deal came back from the dead.

1. PSA: You’ve essentially got today and tomorrow to spend your first half 2023 American Express Dell and Saks credits because neither posts charges before items ship, and shipping delays are common with both. In the case of Saks, I believe it’s just because they’re a legacy company that’s still working on its digital supply chain chops. For Dell it can only be because so clearly and obviously they hate their customers.

To juice the Dell side, Rakuten currently has 10x earning at Dell and 2x at Saks.

2. Tap Air Portugal has a 15% transfer bonus added to incoming Capital One mile transfers through June 30. Sweet spots for US travelers:

– The Caribbean, Central America, and South America in business
– Europe in economy
– Open jaws within a region (regions are big in this program)

This program can also be a reasonable way to have open jaw award tickets purely in North America on United metal, provided that you can find United availability. (Thanks to FM)

3. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards running Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Resale markets continue to be strong even after running the same promotion for the last two full weeks ending on Tuesday.

Happy Thursday!

Kroger’s newest third party gift card product, ripe for resale.

  1. Meijer stores have a bonus 10,000 MPerks points with $100 or more in Happy, Choice, or One4All gift cards through Saturday, limit one per MPerks account. Many of these can be swapped to high resale value brands like Home Depot or BestBuy. In case you don’t want the Meijer gift card, save a few of them and buy electronics for a buyer’s group or to sell on Facebook Marketplace. (Thanks to GCG, and thanks to Nuhertz)
  2. Do this now: Register for Hyatt’s summer promotion, double points on properties outside of the Americas from July 1 through September 15. Bonus earning starts on the second stay.
  3. Albertsons, Safeway, and Vons stores have $15 off of your next purchase when you buy a $75 gift card in multiple brands starting tomorrow and running through Tuesday of next week. The interesting brands for manufactured spend are Lowes, Macys, and Arby’s. Ok, ok, I’m lying about one of those, can you guess which?

    Also, apropos of nothing Safeway gift cards are available at Amazon after an extended absence so let the games begin. (Thanks to DoC)

I’ve helpfully shared this Arby’s marketing photo to remind you about what you’ve been missing.

  1. The American Express Delta personal and business cards both have increased offers, but the business ones are the juicier versions and don’t affect 5/24:

    – Business Gold: 70,000 SkyMiles after $3,000 spend in three months
    – Business Platinum: 90,000 SkyMiles after $4,000 spend in three months
    – Business Reserve: 100,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in three months

    Yes, Delta SkyMiles can suck, and yes, they can be great too. Don’t use them for business class out of the US and you’ll probably get decent value, and worst case co-brand cardholders can use pay with miles for a floor of 1 cent per mile.
  2. Staples continues the endless stream of office supply store gift card deals with fee-free $200 Mastercard gift cards starting Sunday and running through Saturday of next week, limit eight per transaction.

    Call me a rebel but I prefer the Mastercards, even if they’re issued by Pathward like these.
  3. There’s a 20% Ultimate Rewards transfer bonus to Air Canada Aeroplan through July 31. Aeroplan is now arguably the best Chase airline transfer partner for international trips even without the bonus, so the 20% is icing on the cake.

    I wouldn’t transfer speculatively though: you’ve got a month and a half to transfer and book trips, and if that doesn’t work out another bonus will show up soon enough.
  4. The Chase IHG Business card has a sign-up bonus of 165,000 points after spending $3,000 in the first three months. I know some of y’all like the recently increased Chase Marriott bonus offers, but I’d take this $99 annual fee card and bonus over those any day. Now we just need to lobby to bring back IHG PointBreaks.

Office supply stores reflecting on gift card sales this year.

  1. Do this now: Register for Q3 5x promos with the major banks.

    – Chase Freedom: 5x up to $1,500 in spend at gas stations, EV charging, and “live entertainment”. For manufactured spend, speed your way over to a gas station that’s open between at least seven and eleven
    – Discover IT: 5x up to $1,500 in spend at gas stations and with digital wallets. You can tackle this one like above, but digital wallets open other possibilities if you’re scared of being shot at your local neighborhood Sketchway Speedway
    – Citi Dividend: 5x up to $1,500 in spend at gas stations and home improvement stores. At this point, even if you’re worried about being shot, I’d just bring my Freedom, IT, and Dividend to the gas station at once, bullets be damned
    – US Bank Cash+: 5x up to $2,000 in spend at in two categories of your choice (I go with utilities and electronics stores, and there are typically games to play with your local utilities)

    Also, kudos to Citi for releasing their dividend registration and categories at the same time as the competition for the first time in <checks notes> ever.
  2. BlackHawk Network seems to have introduced another roadblock for manufactured spenders: Autodrain for amounts more than a couple dozen dollars is no longer working at major retailers. Unfortunately, the $480 aggregate per store per six minutes BHN rule is still ever present.
  3. H-E-B stores have a promotion for a $15 H-E-B gift card with the purchase of a $100 Home Depot gift card, which has a resale value around 90%. This one is limit one per H-E-B account, so scale with multiple accounts. (Thanks to GCG)
  4. Meijer stores have $10 off of $100 or more in Visa gift cards, limit one per MPerks account through Saturday. The good news? You can use the same email addresses to scale H-E-B and Meijer.

    Meijer stores sell both Pathward and Sunrise bank gift cards, and one of these things is not like the other (duh).

What could possibly go wrong at this upstanding community gas station that sells Visa gift cards and totally doesn’t have an insect infestation?

Evidently June 14, 2023 was officially declared promotion Wednesday by a secret cabal of companies in the League of Manufactured Spend and Travel Hacker Enablement, and my inbox is overflowing with promotions mixed with 4 parts lame to 1 part good. Here’s the good:

  1. Giftcards.com made last week’s Visa e-gift card sale even better, jumping from 5% back to 10% back on $100 gift cards with promo code SUMMER23 or YAYSUMMER. The Capital One Shopping mobile app has 4% cash-back which I believe is the current best offer.

    Limits are $600 per order, $2,000 per rolling 48 hours per email address. I can’t get the promo code to work when logged in, but it works fine with guest checkout at $600 or less.
  2. Southwest has 40% off of travel booked by tomorrow night for travel between August 15 and December 14 with promo code 40OFF for flights other than the two weeks around Thanksgiving.

    If you have any existing bookings between those dates, double check pricing and refund or rebook as necessary.
  3. Do this now if you hold a Chase Southwest credit card: Register for 10 points per dollar on up to $500 in spend at southwest.com. visit a grocery store by Sunday, buy a single $500 gift card, liquidate it, and move on with life. (Thanks to Brian M)
  4. Alaska Airlines has a fare sale for travel to and from Hawaii booked by tomorrow night for flights between August 14 and October 31. This one’s got more teeth than the normal run-of-the-mill airline sale.

Happy Wednesday!

A random sampling of the “4 parts lame” part of the recipe.

Editors note: I’ve been traveling over the weekend through today – I’ll be caught up in day or so. If you reached out over just about any channel and haven’t heard back: it’s not you, it’s me.

  1. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 per more in Visa gift card purchases through Saturday. For best results:

    – Try for multiple transactions back to back
    – Link your cards to Dosh
    – Experiment with different transaction sizes

    Note that the Everywhere variety of cards have lower fees than the regular variety, but unlike the past they don’t necessarily make liquidation easier and may in fact make it more difficult unless you really know what you’re doing.
  2. Meijer stores have $10 off of $100 in Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit one per MPerks account. In unrelated news, did you know you could have more than one email address, and sometimes grocery rewards programs only need an email address to sign up?

    Meijer sells both Sunrise and Pathward cards. Choose wisely my friends.
  3. The United Airlines shopping portal has 1,000 bonus miles for spending $400 or more cumulative through June 18, or an extra 2.5x points on exactly $400 spend on top of existing earnings. Sadly, Giftcards.com is still absent from the portal.
  4. Rumors of the demise of drugstores coding uniquely when paying with third party digital wallets have been debunked. Always be probing.

Happy Tuesday!

Some of those old Metabank gift cards collecting dust at Office Depot may have an extra surprise.

Hopefully you’re recovering from any Friday afternoon RobinHood induced hangovers that may have found their way into your accounts (more to come later). To help, focus on the following:

  1. American Express has an offer for $200 back on $1,000 in spend or more with AirFrance/KLM. This one is an easy base-hit with correlation breaking, no phone calls needed; as usual you could instead just be basic and actually book airfare and fly as intended. (Thanks to hwplainview41)
  2. Giftcards.com has another promotion code for 5% off the total purchase price of Visa e-gift cards: YAYSUMMER.

    I’m still seeing 4% back on the Capital One Shopping mobile app and purchases are tracking each time for me. Limits are $2,000 per rolling 48 hours, and $600 per order, both per email address. Don’t log in for the promo code to apply.
  3. On Friday we discussed an increased sign-up bonus for a few Barclays cards, and on Saturday a link surfaced for an even better version of the Hawaiian card sign-up bonus: 70,000 miles with only a single purchase of any size. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. The Delta SkyMiles portal has a rare spend bonus: 500 miles on purchases summing to $100 or more through June 9.
  5. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have a gift card promotion for $15 or $10 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards. Watch out: normally this is a negative cost deal with $15 back, but in some regions it may be $10; with the reduced payout and $6.95 purchase fees you’re looking at $403.90 for $400 in gift cards (or $303.90 for $300 in gift cards if you hate maximizing things).

    These are Pathward gift cards so make sure you can liquidate before you buy a bunch. There are still methods out there that work, always be probing.
  6. Meijer stores have $25 worth of points back on $250 or more in third party gift cards other than Amazon. Scale with multiple MPerks accounts. (Thanks to GCG)

Happy Monday!

The source of Friday afternoon’s sadness.