{"id":2634,"date":"2021-09-22T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-22T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=2634"},"modified":"2023-04-18T12:16:35","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T18:16:35","slug":"gift-cards-galore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2021\/09\/22\/gift-cards-galore\/","title":{"rendered":"Gift Cards Galore"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gift cards are a hot topic for a few different reasons right now. We\u2019ll start with the positive news and descend into the depths from there:<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> Simon has a new promotion code for 55% off of Mastercard and Visa fees at their volume site<\/a>: SEP21EA55<\/em>. This is one of the best offers they\u2019ve had in recent years. These Metabank cards aren\u2019t working for purchases of money orders at the big three purveyors (with limited exceptions): Walmart, Kroger, and Safeway. They still work at many mid-size and small-size regional grocery chains though, and for certain uses at Target. You can also use bill payment services and maybe a FinTech platform or two to cash them out. <\/p>\n

Don\u2019t forget that American Express doesn\u2019t award points and doesn\u2019t count Simon purchases toward minimum spend.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> Dean let me know that the card linked program Dosh<\/a> has a boosted offer for 4% back on purchases at Office Depot \/ OfficeMax, though the maximum daily award is still $10 per account. If you buy a single $200 Visa or Mastercard with a $6.95 purchase fee, you\u2019ll be ahead $1.05 after Dosh cash back. You\u2019ll do even better with one of the \u201cEverywhere\u201d Visas and their lower purchase fees of $4.95. (Watch out though, the Everywhere cards don\u2019t work everywhere. The probably should be called \u201csome of everywhere\u201d cards.)<\/p>\n

To scale this deal I have one Dosh account for each of my Ink cards, each linked to a different phone number. Do note that there is a report or two<\/a> on reddit that a Dosh account was locked from transfers due to suspected fraud. So far I\u2019m not affected but going forward I\u2019d buy a pack of paper clips or something with your gift card so the numbers don\u2019t come out as exactly $204.95.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> There\u2019s a lot going on in the gift card buyers market right now. It\u2019s too early to tell if you should be concerned or not (I think currently you shouldn\u2019t be, but I just turned my gift card buyer radar-gain up to an eleven). With that in mind I think it\u2019s worth reiterating my general advice: Diversify your pool of gift card buyers so that you spread out any risk, and never sell more in gift cards to a single buyer than you\u2019d be willing to lose if the worst case scenario<\/a> ever occurred again. I\u2019m happy to do $30,000 or more in volume per week when selling gift cards, but I\u2019m most certainly not happy to have $30,000 floated to a single buyer. My favorite buyers pay-out in 3 or so business days which helps me do high volume with less float, and my least favorite take quite a bit longer.<\/p>\n

To add to the above advice: There were signs that things were going pear shaped<\/a> months before the last time the worst case scenario happened, and smart gift card resellers should take those signs as a lesson going forward.<\/p>\n

\n
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Inception: An image of a gift card illustrating when gift card reselling goes pear shaped.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gift cards are a hot topic for a few different reasons right now. We\u2019ll start with the positive news and descend into the depths from<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":2,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[53,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gift-cards","category-quick-hits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2634"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7200,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634\/revisions\/7200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}