{"id":4626,"date":"2022-06-06T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-06T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=4626"},"modified":"2023-04-18T11:39:13","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T17:39:13","slug":"opening-those-closed-loops-another-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2022\/06\/06\/opening-those-closed-loops-another-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Opening Those Closed Loops: Another Death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Gift cards come in two varieties, roughly speaking:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Closed loop, which can be used only at one or a small hand-full of stores, for example:\n<ul>\n<li><a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.starbucks.com\/gift\">Starbucks<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sears.com\/sears-gift-cards.html\">Sears<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.giftcardmall.com\/e-gift-cards\/happy-grad-egift-card?rmsrc=1\">Happy Grad<\/a> (H&amp;M, Wayfair, Ulta, Subway, Dave &amp; Busters, and GameStop)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Open loop, which can be used at essentially any US store that takes a credit card:\n<ul>\n<li><a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.giftcardgranny.com\/visa-gift-card\/\">Visa<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mastercardgiftcard.com\/\">Mastercard<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One of the least talked about unicorn factories in manufactured spend is a store that will let you convert a closed loop gift card to an open loop gift card, and even better if the closed loop gift card can often be bought at a discount. Some now-defunct examples from the past:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/frequentmiler.com\/gift-card-upgrade-results\/\">Toys R Us<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Staples<\/li>\n<li>Kroger<\/li>\n<li>Sears<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Unfortunately, now there\u2019s another we can add to the list: Bed, Bath, and Beyond. First reported a couple of months ago by <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/gcgalore.com\/bed-bath-beyond-no-longer-selling-3rd-party-gift-cards-it-seems\/\">Stephen at GC Galore<\/a> and now confirmed by multiple reports nationwide, Bed, Bath, and Beyond has removed all third party gift cards from their stores. BB&amp;B gift cards can often be found for a 20%+ discount, so this is a big hit for a technique that\u2019s been working for over a decade.<\/p>\n<p>Not all hope is lost though, unicorn stores still exist. Maybe next time you\u2019ve got a Happy Card or a random third party gift card, try and buy another gift card with it and see what happens. Good luck!<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-editorskit-rounded\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4632\" sizes=\"(max-width: 684px) 100vw, 684px\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/sears-2.jpeg\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/sears-2.jpeg 684w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/sears-2-300x206.jpeg 300w\" width=\"420\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">Ok, so technically Sears may still be working, but first you have to find a Sears that doesn\u2019t look like this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gift cards come in two varieties, roughly speaking: Closed loop, which can be used only at one or a small hand-full of stores, for example:<\/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":1,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[53,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gift-cards","category-ms-hints"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4626","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=4626"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7018,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4626\/revisions\/7018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}