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Today only (Monday, April 22 2013), the cash back portal, TopCashBack, is offering 2.5% cash back when buy gift cards after clicking through to “American Express Prepaid and Gift Cards”. TopCashBack usually offers 1.5% cash back for American Express. A competing cash back site, BigCrumbs, currently offers 1.4% cash back.
Note that TopCashBack will run a one day special for GiftCardMall a week from now (Monday, April 29). On that day they will increase the GiftCardMall payout from 1.5% to 2%. See “Better than free manufactured spend” for thoughts about how to leverage these promotions.
This post was written yesterday, so I didn’t have a way to capture a screenshot showing the temporary 2.5% cash back rate. Instead, you will see below an expert artist rendering of what the screen may look like today:
Tips
- American Express gift cards (and prepaid cards) cannot be used as debit cards.
- Do not use Citibank cards to buy these gift cards as Citi is known to treat these purchases as cash advances (and will charge high fees). If you are unsure whether your bank will treat these purchases as cash advances, you can protect yourself by calling and asking for your cash advance limit to be reduced to zero (some banks won’t allow it to go all the way to zero, but at least you should be able to lower it to less than you plan to pay online).
- Don’t go overboard. If you buy tens of thousands of dollars of gift cards per month with one credit card, you are very likely to be targeted for a financial review.
- American Express has strict, but not clearly defined limits regarding how much you can buy per transaction. See “Learning Amex gift card rules the hard way.”
- To pay less in fees for Amex gift cards, buy the cards shown in the top-left corner of the Amex Gift card page. These cards can hold values up to $3000 each. By going with larger value cards, the shipping and fees become a smaller percentage of the total.
- You may be able to find Amex discount codes online to save on shipping or to waive gift card fees. TopCashBack, though, says “coupons that are not displayed on the TopCashback site, will nullify eligibility for cashback.” So, it is safer to go without discount codes.
- You can order a customized gift card with your name on it, and a custom $ amount, by scrolling to the bottom of the Amex page and looking for the tiny link to “Gift Cards” (under the YouTube Icon). See screenshots here: “Amex Gift Cards, this and that.”
- Don’t be surprised if it takes several months for cash back to become payable. I bought a $3000 gift card through TopCashBack in January. Within hours TopCashBack reported the transaction as pending (which was comforting), but 3 months went by before the cash back became payable.
- I can verify, from personal experience, that American Express does award miles / points when you use their credit cards to buy these gift cards. That may change at any time, though. So, go slow and check your statements regularly.
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To be fair to TCB, I had to go back here and post the final experience. After another couple of months the cash back finally cleared to be payable. Overall it took 5.5 months from the transaction date and quite a bit of effort to get it but it’s finally paid. In the meantime, I did a couple of Marriott transactions via TCB and those came through fine and quick.
Hi Alex,
I’d be happy to take a look at this for you and provide you with an update. Can you email contact@topcashback.com with FAO John in the header?
Many thanks,
John
After 3.5 months from the date of purchase my transaction finally was confirmed with AmEx and moved to Confirmed stage. Hopefully it will be progressing to Payable eventually. However, the cashback amount wasn’t set according to the transaction date offer so looks like another round of e-mail exchange with TCB support.
Hi marathon man,
Could you email in to contact@topcashback.com?
I’ll then be able to have a look at your claim and speak to our claims team to see if I can do anything.
Best wishes,
John
Hi marathon man,
Thanks for posting. I’m sorry that you aren’t satisfied with our service. I can assure you that we aren’t a scam and have many satisfied members.
Unfortunately, the claims process and the time it takes for a transaction to progress can be quite long. This is beyond our control, but we do pass more than 100% cashback on to you as soon as we receive it and we work hard to resolve issues as quickly as possible.
Many thanks,
John
John I will be satisfied if you respond to and get in queue those missing inquiries a lot faster than you have. then I dont mind waiting for the CB.
Hi Missy and Andy,
I’d be really happy to answer your specific queries but I would need to access your accounts. If you email contact@topcashback.com, I can do this for you and provide you with some feedback.
I can assure you that we pass on all cashback which we receive and the vast majority of American Express transactions have progressed without any problems.
Regarding submissions of claims, these are sent to the merchant’s affiliate network in batches every few weeks.
Please get in touch by email and I’ll get you all updates.
Best wishes,
John
Missy, Thanks of advice. A while ago, I bought $5,000 AmEX GCs ($2k+$3K, two cards) and topcashback only gave me $30. I sent an inquiry and they did not answer me so far for months.
looks like they are offering 2% bonus today — I login and found it at 1:30am, Tues 6/4/2013.
Andy, the money TCB get from AmEx will go to their bottom line, not those naive fools who buy via TCB. If you have to get cashback, go via reputable companies such as mrrebates and ebates.
MISSY I like your head on style! Big Crumbs is great too. TCB has worked for me but man do they take long and things seem clunky. I do have one claim out with them for $40 CB and when i emailed them they took a few days and then emailed back telling me to file it through a certain link on their page. So I did and got an auto response saying they’d look into it. That’s been over a month ago. I suspect if they look into it, this will take 14 weeks… and only THEN, would the 12-14 weeks begin that one has to wait on the CB for the purchase! So it’s scammy and poorly run. They got hit with too many people (If you are going to run a business, you should have foreseen that fellas!) and cannot handle it. I should have known myself and if and when all these CBs come from purchases in April and early May, I likely wont use TCB again. Not worth it.
Also had a very large Amex GC purchase from mid-May not post to TCB. I filed a claim and now I wait. FWIW, I used to use BigCrumbs and never had an issue with over 10 orders over the last few years. If TCB doesn’t come through with my claim, that will be really disappointing.
Just google Topcashback complaints, and you will be amazed that you are among thousands of those who never got their money. Also, there are a lot of “good reviews” posted by TCB itself.
John,
you are lying again. Here, you are saying you send claims in batches while almost 1.5 months ago you said you submitted the claim to AmEx (I received same email as Alex). I guess you are just buying time in hope people forget about the money and never complain. Scumbags.
Hi Alex,
Thanks for posting.
I’m sorry that the claims system takes a while. We can only submit claims in batches which is why there is sometimes a delay between you lodging the claim and it being submitted to the merchant.
My previous post wasn’t as clear as it should have been. We expect it to take up to 12 weeks from the date on which we submit it to the merchant, not the date on which it is lodged.
I know that the process isn’t ideal but this is largely out of our control. Perhaps you could email me at http://www.topcashback.com? I can then see if I can speed this up for you or at least ask our claims team to get you an update?
Best wishes,
John
Those who didn`t get their money from TCB, make sure you write Attorney General and BBB, otherwise, John will spend your money on caviar and such and you`ll be a loser.
I submitted my missing cashback claim on April 30. Today May 30 I received an e-mail stating that my claim was submitted to American Express. Wonder why they had to wait a whole month to do it?? TCB doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to help the customers. From this moment they’re stating it will take another 2-3 months – so misleading as originally they stated (and John from TCB confirmed it multiple times including post #173 just above) that it should be 12 weeks from the claim submission. TCB has attractive CB rates but what’s the point if they don’t pay them.
Hi Everyone,
I’m sorry that you haven’t received responses here.
If you sent a missing cashback claim by going to customer care and clicking ‘view or lodge a claim’ we don’t generally respond to this- but we do forward the query to the merchant and the claims team will be working on it. They always post when the claim is resolved but that can take up to 12 weeks.
If you submit a support ticket, these are always answered within a few days.
To help me understand why you aren’t getting a response, can you all email me at contact@topcashback.com, letting me know your username on here? I can then access your accounts and help.
I should be able to get these quickly resolved for you.
Best wishes,
John
Same experience as Missy. Amex GC purchase didn’t track, I opened up a ticket, haven’t received any updates and it’s not showing up in my account.
John, I have contacted you through the support link, but haven`t received any updates. Why don`t you respond and resolve the issue if you are saying it`s not scam. It`s been almost a month and my account doesn`t show any purchases.