Category: Gift Cards

On Saturday there was a great opportunity at a major grocery store chain that gave 20% off of convertible gift cards, and as far as I know it was never made public so unfortunately there’s no place out in the open for reading more at this moment. But, we can learn a lesson for finding future unicorns: When a sale is advertised for a particular type of gift card, sometimes other gift cards in the same family will also be on sale. Trying with a small dollar amount could be extremely rewarding.

  1. Meijer $10 off $150 or more in Visa gift cards. Larger denomination gift cards aren’t excluded so I’d go for $500s. Meijer carries both Metabank and Sunrise gift cards, so you’ve got options on the liquidation front from home and in-store.
  2. The giftcards.com promo for 5% off of the total cost of Visa eGift cards for up to $1,500 in spend per transaction has one week remaining, expiring on September 11. Use promo code ENDOFSUMMER since the portals list that code in particular.

    I’m bringing this one up again because it’s a new month and that means a fresh $2,000 in monthly spend for major shopping portals, including 3x at AA. The Capital One shopping portal still lacks the $2,000 monthly restriction found on other portals, so go for that one after you hit the first $2,000 in spend.

  3. US Bank has increased its business checking account bonus from $300 to $400 without changing other requirements. To get the bonus:

    – Deposit $1,500 within 30 days
    – Enroll in online banking
    – Make 10 qualifying transactions on the account (which practically speaking means 10 ACHs or 10 $0.50 Amazon gift balance reloads from your debit card)

    If you don’t live in US Bank’s territory, open a brokerage account first in order to be eligible to open a checking account.

A hot gift card sale can have unintended consequences.

  1. US Airlines and the DOT have agreed to additional passenger rights for delays within an airline’s control (in lieu of additional regulation). Under the agreement, your rights are now:

    – A meal voucher for delays of three hours or longer
    – A hotel, or some other renumeration if a hotel is unavailable for an overnight delay

    Delays due to weather and air traffic control won’t qualify, but delays due to mechanical issues, crew availability, and gate congestion will. Because there’s no official law, the specifics vary slightly by airline. You can find the new airline policies here: Southwest, JetBlue, United, Delta, AA. Almost certainly you’re going to need to know to ask for what these rights grant you so keep the policies somewhere readily available.

  2. American Express has increased its Business Checking bonus to 30,000 Membership Rewards, after $5,000 in deposits within 30 days, maintaining that balance for 60 days, and making 10 ACH, mobile deposit, bill payments, or wires within 60 days.

    If you don’t have many shenanigans on your AmEx accounts and don’t expect to for the next couple of months, I’d do this sign up bonus and close the account immediately when it posts. If you do, I’d skip it.

  3. H-E-B grocery has a couple of travel gift cards at a nice discount through Tuesday, limit 1 per account:

    – Southwest $100 gift card for $85
    – Airbnb $100 gift card and a free bonus $15 H-E-B gift card for $100

    If I were in H-E-B territory I’d be scaling both of these quite a bit, but I’m not so instead I’m begrudgingly earning 1 SkyMile per dollar on my Airbnb bookings using deltaairbnb.com like a sucker.

Now you have something else to look forward to during your airport delay: A Michelin negative three star rated sandwich paid for by the airline.

  1. Office Depot OfficeMax, in addition to having the most cromulent retail store name in the United States, has another $15 back on $300 or more in Visa gift cards sale running through Saturday. As usual:

    – Try for multiple transactions in the same trip
    – Use multiple Dosh accounts, one per credit card for an additional 2% back
    – Buy the Everywhere variety of cards for a lower overall cost

    Note that these are Metabank gift cards, and that the Everywhere variety doesn’t actually work everywhere because truth in advertising. (Thanks to GC Galore)

  2. American Express has a few interesting targeted offers:

    – $60 back or 6,000 Membership Rewards on $300 in Delta gift cards
    – $100 back on $500 or more at Hyatt hotels in Mexico
    – 20% back up to $250 in spend at Marriott properties in North America

  3. Giant, Martin’s, and Stop & Shop stores have 8x points on Happy and Giving Good gift cards purchased through Thursday, limit $2,000 per account. Some of these cards can be converted to BestBuy and Home Depot gift cards, which means those of you living in New England outside of Kroger’s footprint can have some fun with third party gift cards too.
  4. Get 2,400 Wyndham Rewards points and $0.35 by downloading the Bakkt mobile app, linking your Wyndham account for 1,000 points, and redeeming 100 points for $0.35 in cash for another 1,500 point bonus. Afterword, delete the Bakkt app because feng shui on your phone demands it.

Pictured: A feng shui phone captured immediately after deleting the Bakkt app.

  1. The IHG flash sale from a week and a half ago is back, most properties are again pricing at about half off for award redemptions. In related news, Holiday Inn Express stays continue to be dubious at best as far as I’m concerned.
  2. Kroger has $10 off of $150 or more in Visa and Mastercard gift cards online using promo code DEALDAYS2022 through August 30.
  3. As of this writing, Dell is 10x at Rakuten or 11% cash back at TopCashBack, which makes it a great time to burn your second half 2022 Business Platinum $200 Dell credits. (Thanks to Miles)
  4. Kroger is having another 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards Friday through Tuesday. Clearly the person who builds Starbucks stores across the street from other Starbucks stores has moved on to Kroger IT.
  5. The Albert debit card has a targeted offer of $500 for enabling direct deposit and receiving $500 or more in direct deposits for 90 days. To see if you’re eligible, open the Albert app and look for a promotional banner. Note that Albert has a $150 bonus for both the referrer and referred, but no sign-up bonus directly; so be sure to use a referral for new accounts. (Thanks to Nate via MEAB slack)

The mastermind behind this mess is now evidently working at Kroger.

  1. OfficeDepot Office Max has $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard purchases through Saturday. Don’t forget to link your cards to Dosh for an extra 2% back and try for multiple transactions to minimize time spent at the overpriced dinostore (or is it dinostaur?)
  2. Stick with me on this one: Avis has a rather interesting promotion for 20,000 Etihad Guest miles when renting an intermediate or higher class car for three days between September 1 and November 30, but you have to book by tomorrow evening.

    You can earn the bonus three times, and that’s interesting because 50,000 Etihad miles will get you a business class ticket on AA from North America to Europe, and 62,500 is enough for a business class ticket on AA from North America to Japan. At my local airport weekend rentals seem to be the cheapest, and three day weekend rentals through the promotion portal in September and October are about $208. So, I can buy a business class ticket to Europe for $624 and still have miles to spare. (I will be doing this if I can, but so far I’ve been getting payment failures)

  3. Do this now: Register for your customized United MilePlay offer. My offer was 3,900 bonus miles for taking a trip by September 30 that costs at least $200, which pairs really well with cashing out AmEx Platinum credits to TravelBank.

The UK Avis Point of Sale system.

Giftcards.com has a negative cost promotion running through September 11th for 5% off of the total cost of eVisa gift cards using either promo codes EOS5 or ENDOFSUMMER, which brings the total cost of a $250 eVisa to $243.45. Given the long duration and potential for scale, let’s go in depth with this site’s peculiarities:

  • Purchase limits of e-gift cards are $2,000 per rolling 48 hours per account (The T&Cs say 24 hours, but we all know that T&Cs don’t match reality much of the time, right?)
  • Most portals will pay out on no more than $2,000 in purchases per month per giftcards.com account (The CapitalOne portal currently has no total limit language but it’s too young to know how it’ll behave at above $2,000 in spend)
  • The T&Cs say there’s a limit of $1,500 in gift card purchases or $75 off per account, but again T&Cs often don’t really match reality
  • Orders under $1,000 in gift card value will track on portals very quickly, while orders of $1,000 and up will often take a couple of months to track

Given the above, how do we scale?

  • The site seems to track accounts to the same person by address, email, IP, and phone number so switch those up for new accounts (notably, they don’t seem to track by cookies or credit card numbers, and sometimes the IP tracking is minimal)
  • Their system seems to have a public records verification lookup in the backend, so keep that in mind when messing with addresses and names
  • Keep track of your rolling 48 hour spend and order again when the time is right
  • Consider a particular portal burned for payouts for the entire month when you hit $2,000 in spend through that account, unless perhaps CapitalOne Shopping really has no limits (note that via the Capital One Shopping mobile app the payout is 6% versus 3% on the website)
  • Place your gift card orders in under $1,000 face value increments for better shopping portal tracking

Sometimes Giftcards.com will make you feel like Don Quixote and decide that it doesn’t like an email address, a physical address, or a credit card and your orders will be cancelled every time. When that happens there’s nothing you can do but move on to the next iteration and try again.

These cards are Metabank gift cards so have a liquidation plan. These e-gift cards are often easier to liquidate at home than their physical counterparts, but your mileage may vary.

Pictured: Tilting at windmills can actually work; or, not all quixotic endeavors are quixotic.

Introduction

A conversation I overheard yesterday at a local coffee shop:

– No-one: …
– Absolutely no-one: …
– Kroger: Hey I’ve got a fresh idea, how about 4x fuel points gift cards this weekend?
– Third party gift sellers: [facepalm]

In a move that could only surprise someone with advanced dementia, Kroger is indeed having another 4x fuel points sale on third party gift cards between Friday and Sunday. In case you’re keeping track, we’ve had fewer than a dozen days since June without a 4x fuel points sale, and as a result the gift card resale market is depressed, like Tony Soprano season 2 depressed.

A Rocky Year

Fuel points either partially or completely offset the loss taken from selling bulk gift cards and are therefore a huge part of the bulk gift card market toolkit. In prior years Kroger fuel points were the easiest grocery point to deal with by far. But this year, Kroger has started to throw wrenches into the works:

It looks as though Kroger isn’t happy with its fuel points program and is actively taking steps to change how it works. In the meantime, bulk buyers and bulk sellers are being cautious and volume has plummeted, presumably until the dust as settled and we have a better idea about what’s working and what’s not.

What Seems Safe?

So far I haven’t heard any reports of accounts with fewer than 20,000 fuel points being targeted, so 20,000 may be a soft capacity on accounts for the near-term future. It also seems likely that account age is part of Kroger’s silent blocking algorithm, so your long-term personal account is probably safe.

Here’s the bright-side I guess: Buying an Amazon gift card at Kroger will definitely earn you a few fuel points for your own use, and that discount beats fake discount Amazon gift cards sold directly by Amazon.

Happy selling!

Misunderstanding how Kroger fuel points work.

  1. The Alaska Airlines Business card has an increased 70,000 mile sign-up bonus, made really interesting because there’s no hard-coded limit on the number of these that you can open in a day or on the total number you can have, and Bank of America business cards lack any real churning restrictions.
  2. Staples is again offering fee-free Visa $200 gift cards Sunday through the following Saturday, limit five per transaction. If your Staples doesn’t seem to have any stock:

    – Ask an employee to open the rack and grab new ones
    – Look for another rack behind the customer service desk
    – Look for another rack in the back of the store

    These are Metabanks, so have a liquidation plan. (Thanks to GC Galore)

  3. If you need to cancel a Marriott booking made with a certificate, it:

    – May or may not error out
    – May or may not return your certificate

    There’s a workaround that will reliably allow you to cancel and return your certificate:

    – Visit your reservation confirmation
    – Click “Change”
    – Select the same room type and same dates
    – Choose points when the system asks how you want to pay

    After you’ve done all that, the certificate will be reliably returned and you’ll be able to cancel your reservation, which makes this ever so slightly better than Citi IT.

Candid shot of Marriott’s development staff during reservation management coding sessions.