Category: Gift Cards

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.

  1. Kroger is having another 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards Friday through Sunday.

    – Digital coupon for third party gift cards
    – Digital coupon for fixed value Visa and Mastercards

    The fuel points market isn’t as high as it was in the roaring 2021s, but it continues to adapt and recover nicely. Good fuel points brokers are assuming shutdown risk immediately or within 24 hours, so choose wisely my friends. (Thanks to GCG)
  2. I don’t cover things that I think aren’t worth your time, which is why you won’t see anything about $2,500 sign-up bonus for a bank account that requires $200,000 in new funds to be locked up for 90 days and pays 0.15% in interest; it just doesn’t make sense to waste time reading about something like that when you can easily earn 4-6% on those funds with existing savings or money market accounts.

    This philosophy means I almost never talk about Bilt, but I’m going to make an exception today because 2x everywhere for Hyatt points is definitely above the line: The first of every month is “rent day”, and you earn 2x on general spend on the Bilt Mastercard for up to $10,000 on rent day. Unfortunately today doesn’t coincide with the Kroger 4x promotion, but I guess you can’t win ’em all.
  3. Do this now: Register for Wyndham’s summer promotion for stays through September 5 booked by August 31:

    – 5,000 bonus points on two night stays
    – 10,000 bonus points on three night stays
    – 15,000 bonus points on four night stays (or longer)

    Wyndham cardholders can earn a bonus twice, non-card holders once.
  4. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, once a Sears co-branded card, has a new targeted spending bonus:

    – 90,000 Shop Your Way points for $300 in travel spend, once per month for each month between June and December for a total of 630,000 points (!)

    Sears famously didn’t win them all either. (Thanks to birt)

Sears showing that you can’t win them all in the most Sears way possible. (Thanks to Kyle for the picture)

  1. Giftcards.com has a promotion for 5% off of up to six $100 Visa e-gift cards using promo code SUMMER23 or SUMMER. As of this writing, the best portal to use is Capital One Shopping’s mobile app with 4% cash back. You should be able to do $2,000 per 48 hours across four different orders per account.

    It took me longer than I care to admit to make this work, but the punchline is don’t use a Mastercard (for whatever reason three from separate banks all failed for me) and definitely don’t be logged in, check out as a guest. The total cost was $605.70, and I’ll earn that in credit card spend and $24.20 from Capital One Shopping.
  2. Do this now: Earn a $25 Lyft credit for:

    – Linking your Hilton and Lyft accounts
    – Registering with Hilton here (Thanks to Kurt for the corrected link)
    – Staying a single night in a Hilton property through September 5

    After that’s done, reset your Lyft partner link back to Delta or Bilt if you prefer one of those programs to Hilton.

Happy Tuesday!

My keyboard after trying the 18,000th giftcards.com order.

  1. Kroger is having a weekend 4x fuel points promotion running Friday through Sunday on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards. Resale markets have nearly recovered to rates found before Kroger started banning accounts because, like the documentary Jurassic Park taught us, life will find a way. (Thanks to GCG)
  2. Plastiq has filed for bankruptcy and already has a vulture company that’s agreed to scoop up its assets, pending court approval. The payment processor was once a great arrow in the manufactured spender’s quiver, but the company’s unstated mission was to perfect the art of a slow death spiral and they succeeded spectacularly. Their bankruptcy shouldn’t be surprising ay after they failed their merger with the Colonnade SPAC which caused the SPAC to die too.

    Plastiq wasn’t without utility even as recently as this week, but maybe that’s changed. Personally I’m not going to send any further payments through the platform, but you’re all adults; do what’s best for you. (Thanks to VFTW)
  3. Chase increased the bonuses on its personal Southwest cards through June 26, and each includes a single use promo code for up to eight passengers for 30% off of a paid or award booking.

    – Rapid Rewards Plus: 60,000 bonus points and 30% off code
    – Rapid Rewards Premier: 60,000 bonus points and a 30% off code
    – Rapid Rewards Priority: 60,000 bonus points and a 30% off code

    These offers are available via referral too, so make sure you use a friend’s referral link and make their day too unless you’re referring from another player.
  4. Do this now: Register for Wyndham’s summer promotion for 5,000 bonus points on two night stays, 10,000 bonus points on three night stays, or 15,000 bonus points on four night or longer stays through September 5. If you’re a Wyndham card holder you’ll get a one-time additional 5,000 bonus points on your first stay too. Complex much?

Plastiq obviously was part of this manufactured spender’s quiver.

Today we’re keeping it short and sweet (because you know, usually we’re super long winded around here).

  1. DoC notes that there’s a Citizens bank $300+$100 sign-up bonus, and even though it’s mentioned to only be available in certain states, let’s just say that’s not been my experience. The bonus:

    – $300 for getting $500 or more in direct deposits in the first 60 days
    – $2 back per debit transaction, up to $100 back in the first 60 days

    Obviously you should automate the second part, and possibly even find a way to trigger the first part without bugging your employer.
  2. Simon has 35% off of all fees when ordering Metabank Pathward gift cards using promo code MAY23SAVE35.
  3. Multiple reports suggest that BlueBird has throttled cash withdrawls at an ATM to $80 per transaction. I’ll be honest, I didn’t know people were still using BlueBirds at ATMs but to each their own.

Happy Tuesday!

Today’s post (in red).

  1. Meijer Stores have a promotion for $10 worth of MPerks points with a $75 Happy, Choice, or One4All gift card, limit one per MPerks account.
  2. Rakuten has 3x at Walmart in-store and in theory it’s “unlimited use”, but you do need to re-add the offer to your account an hour after each purchase. Also in theory gift cards are excluded, but, uh, yeah.

    Also, watch out for what is apparently a new trend at Walmart, because reasons. (Thanks to brykupono)
  3. Check your American Express offers for a couple of Marriott offers that should stack and are gamable:

    – $100 off of $300 at US properties
    – $100 off of $500 at North American properties

    Another option is staying at a Marriott and using these organically, but, uh, yeah again.
  4. In addition to last week’s American Express personal Green heightened offer that included a statement credit, referral links are now seeing similar offers and it seems to be widely targeted:

    – Platinum: 150,000 Membership Rewards and a $200 statement credit
    – Gold: 90,000 Membership Rewards and a $200 statement credit
    – Blue Cash Preferred: $400 cash back and a waived annual fee the first year

    Referrers are currently seeing a low of 10,000 Membership Rewards and a high of 35,000 Membership Rewards for referring.

Happy Monday!

Soon to be unleashed at Walmarts across the country. (Thanks to Country_Points)