Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
UPDATE 5/18/2015: Based on many reader reports, I’m declaring this opportunity dead. It seems that the store in question has stopped allowing gift cards to be used to buy other gift cards.
Here’s a little Thursday morning treasure hunt…
I received a tip last night that a certain store is now carrying Vanilla Visa gift cards loadable up to $500. I knew from experience that this store often accepts their own gift cards as payment for other gift cards (I call that “upgrading” gift cards) so I rushed out to see what I could find. My first view of the store was not encouraging:
Luckily, as I walked past the sign an employee informed me that the systems were once again working. Whew. I then quickly found the treasure:
As expected, these were the Vanilla Visa gift cards that are loadable from $20 to $500. I took one to the register and opened Google Wallet on my iPhone. There I found a $5 promo gift certificate to this store which was going to expire in just a few days. I asked the cashier to load $500 to the Visa gift card and I paid partially with my $5 promo gift card and the rest with a credit card. Easy as pie.
There was, though, one little catch before I could declare victory in my quest to buy these Visa gift cards with store gift cards. The fee for the card was $4.95 and, surprisingly, this store charged sales tax on that fee. As a result, my total charge was $505.25. So, $500.25 was charged to my credit card. It was still possible that one could pay the fees with a gift card, but not the primary balance. I had to find out if more than just the fees could be paid by gift card…
I ran over to a nearby office supply store and bought a $25 gift card to this store in question. Then, I returned to this store and bought another $500 Visa card. I had no problem paying $25 of the total with my new gift card. I paid the $480.25 balance with my credit card.
Why this is awesome
Gift cards to this store are available at many stores in which you can earn credit card category bonuses: office supply stores, grocery stores, drug stores, and probably even gas stations. You can also double dip by buying these gift cards at grocery stores that offer fuel points. Or, you could go through a portal to, perhaps, Staples.com and buy an e-gift card. Pay with your Chase Ink card to get 5 points per dollar, in addition to the portal rewards!
This particular store is also sometimes available through Amex Offers where you could save as much as 20%. Even better, gift cards to this store are often available at a discount through sites like eBay. And, of course, we know we can earn extra points on eBay too! You can also buy these gift cards from resellers (search GiftCardGranny.com), usually for more than 10% off of face value.
Sears? Nope.
Why I haven’t named the store
There are a few reasons I didn’t name the store here. One is simply that I think it is fun to find things like this, and I hope that you’ll enjoy the challenge of figuring it out. Please don’t blurt out the answer! More importantly, I believe that many companies monitor the press and blogs for mentions of their store names. While I don’t think we would be doing anything wrong here, I worry that drawing the company’s attention to this might kill it prematurely. And, finally, there were only a few of these $500 cards on the entire gift card rack. If too many people run out at once to buy these, most people will go home empty handed.
Caution
There is a big risk in tying up a lot of your money in gift cards to this store. At any time they may stop allowing gift cards; they may be out of stock; or they may stop selling $500 Visa gift cards altogether. If that happens you’ll find yourself using the gift cards to buy anything from bikes to trains to video games…
Also note: several readers have said that the store in their area does not allow gift cards for purchasing gift cards.. So, your mileage may vary.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
[…] #10: An awesome new 5X (and beyond) game. Let’s play… […]
Interesting to see the recent comments on this thread. I successfully bought 2 $500 VGCs at my local store last week (SW PA) with physical gift cards. It worked so well I went back yesterday only to be told my an employee that they no longer take giftcards for VGCs…. he said it was a new policy as of about a month ago but due to my experience last week it seems the registered aren’t hard coded to reject giftcards.
I’ll go back and try to get a different cashier and hopefully get rid of the $1K+ I have in my pocket, but that’ll likely be it for this retailer.
Good luck! I’ll be interested to hear how that turns out.
Fortunately for me, after a second unsuccessful attempt I finally had a cashier not question the process. Took my three giftcards and the register let the transaction process – whew! It’s been close to two weeks since and safe to say I’m not going this route again. It was fun while it lasted though but looks like that ship has sailed.
Thanks for following up Chris. I’m glad it worked out!
In my experience this week (midwest region), registers began being hardcoded. Most cashiers are already denying the transaction from the start, but found one who wanted to try and the register rejected the transaction. Another time it looked like it went through, but the VGC didn’t get loaded! Had to go through trying to at least get the refund back to the store GC. That was a pain. I knew a while back this deal was killed, but still wanted to try one last time once I saw more VGC after a long absence. Now stuck with a large store GC which I’ll have to resell at a loss.
[…] were each registered with the Spend $50, Get $10 Amex Offer. I picked up a $500 gift card to this mystery store and a $50 Amazon gift card. I asked the cashier to split tender $50 at a time and I proceeded to […]
im not picking up on any clues here, so its probably not in my area, so no harm in telling me where to find these 🙂
donnuyen @ gmail.com
Doesn’t matter. Deal is dead. This chain now widely prevents their gift cards from being used to buy other gift cards. Didn’t take long for the memo to get out. If anyone can find a single cashier that allows it you best not tell a soul or that store will have problems and this deal is not worth causing a cashier to get in trouble. Consider this deal dead. I tried and first thing out of their mouth was “…can’t use our gift card to buy gift cards.”
Hi Ed, so now that it is dead, would share the name of the store?
Thanks
Wow… I bought 2x $500 Vanilla Visa gift cards Friday night (3/13/15) using this technique. It’s still alive and well in my area.
I’ve been buying these in my area for the past few weeks. Kind of a pain to jump from Staples to Ebay to wherever, especially with SWA portal possibly not paying out anymore but still fun.
A Manager did tell me in one of my local stores that they discontinued the variable load VGC’s. Fingers crossed they show up again in the next couple weeks!
Any chance anyone could email where this is? I have tried multiple stores and read this posting multiple times and had no luck. Maybe not in my region?
jaketlee23 at gmail
Thanks
It’s not that hard. Think of all the stores that are in a typical Gift Card Mall rack. Now look at the photo carefully and see what items are sold in the background, or the kind of stickers that this store uses for pricing. It took me 5 minutes. FM should not be spoon feeding.
OK, *NOW* IT MIGHT BE DEAD…
I tried this yesterday at a store (not my usual store (my store is out of $500 Vanilla Visa GC’s) and was told that the cash register system was reprogrammed 2 weeks ago to no longer accept store gift cards to buy other gift cards.(!!).
I’m going to keep trolling my local store to see if they get more VR Visa cards in and hope I’m not stuck with over *$1000* of store GC’s. (!!)
“I don’t wanna grow up…” but I.. don’t want to be stuck with this much $$ in store GC’s either.
Nooooo!!!!
Anyone else have recent experience?
Yep, dead. Same experience. I was told by store employees it was due to so many coming in since February from something they read on a blog. Figures.
Thanks (sarc).
This whole thing is an excellent example of why it’s best not to out something that can only tolerate the number of people that have already found it on their own. Blogs need to use more restraint about types of deals like this. I know FM has wisely held back some ms opportunties in the past because he felt it was too limited and outing it would kill it. Maybe he thought this deal was less at risk of quick shutdown, but all bloggers should realize by now the negative impact they have when they give too many clues to deals like this. He obviously knew it was fragile enough that he didn’t name the retailers, but any clues lead to too many involved in a fragile deal which ends up killing it for everyone. Yes, I had found this little ms method on my own as many others did. It could only tolerate the numbers of people who found it on their own and continued to find it on their own. When this became widespread by the power of blogs, it brought in too many into the stores and that prompted a change. Retailers will tolerate certain numbers for certain transactions, but too many and they kill it. Weigh more carefully whether a method can truly tolerate more people involved in it beyond the numbers who found it on their own. Remember, bloggers do not have an obligation to out everything as though without them no one will found out. Weigh carefully, please. I appreciate this blog, but knew when this article hit back in late January it wouldn’t be long for this method to die.
You’ll probably have to do what a lot of others are having to do with these GCs, sell them on a gift card reseller site. You’ll take a bit of a loss, but that’s better than being stuck with that much. Also, heard there are thieves reading this blog and other blogs to find certain types of GCs at retailers which is leading to many shutdowns like this one. All bloggers need to realize there aren’t just newbie and veteran travel hackers reading their blogs, but also criminals looking for certain information.
Ed, sorry for newbie questions, but what does YMMV mean?
YMMV means ‘your miles may vary’ which has become a sort of nickname for saying what you experience in your area may be different than what is being discussed. One person may experience a different outcome than another. YMMV basically means ‘this does not work everywhere and in fact may be rare’.
Ed, thanks so much for explanation! Enjoy your day.
Dear people, it’s not that hard to figure out from this blog what store/stores he’s talking about. There are clues everywhere; good grief! If you can’t take the time to research on your own you shouldn’t bother with this game. You want everything spoon fed to you like a baby. It’s time to be a big boy or a big girl and research on your own to find deals. This is getting ridiculous. I’ve been ms’ing since before any of these ‘give it all away to the masses’ blogs existing and before most of these youngin’s were out of high school and somehow I managed to find the deals on my own. I’ve watched as deals would vanish once blogs outed them to the masses whom some are not really ready for this and can do great damage to themselves by getting stuck with a lot of money tied up in cards they can’t liquidate in their area. At the very least, he should not have to email you store names and you should be made to investigate on your own. That’s the best way to learn what works and what doesn’t in your area. This very chain of stores doesn’t even carry gift cards at all locations except their own gift cards so this is very YMMV. Be careful you don’t get stuck with this store’s gift card only to find out you can’t do anything with it in your area except buy their merchandise. This blog did warn you, but the spoon fed ones need reminding.
[…] on the MPX list, this might be an easier albeit less lucrative way to buy the store gift cards in Frequent Milers 5x and beyond post which can be upgraded to Visa gift […]
Man, if you can send me store name via e-mail, it would be awesome. Trying to get few more miles to transfer to Korean Air for a trip this summer…and this would make thing much easier.
Thanks in advance.
greg, would you email me the name of the store? it might be too far for me to be worth the hassle just for MS but worth for meeting minimum spending requirements. thanks!
It would be lucrative only if you can fund the entire purchase with GC purchased from office supply store. Besides, buying more than one at a time would look suspioious.
i guess i will just have to wait before million mile secrets to write up a post with lots of big red arrows!!
That will surely killed this!
Will appreciate the name and location of the store by email. Also add any tips tricks and experiences manufacturing cc spending
Thank you so much
the chain is walmart
My email is miguelthestrongest@hotmail please somebody help
OK someone email me the answer before I spend the whole weekend trying to figure it out please….lol…. pv goe cke @ gmail . com
Please could somebody give the name of store by email