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A number of online portals offer cash back or miles when purchasing American Express gift cards. This presents a great opportunity to run up spend on credit cards to meet minimum spend requirements, hit big spend thresholds, or just to earn regular everyday rewards. For more about Amex gift cards, please see:
For the past 9 months or so, most portals have offered 1.5% cash back for Amex gift cards, but they regularly offer one-day increased rates as well. The special one-day offers seem random, but they’re not. At least for now, they seem to be predictable.
Two weeks ago I posted my observations about repeated Amex gift card portal deals, and I used the information I had found to predict the next deals. Since then, each of the cash back portals I had written about has offered a one day Amex gift card deal. While a couple of my predictions were very close, it turned out that I was working from incomplete information. Readers informed me, for example, that BeFrugal had offered 2.2% cash back on June 12th and June 26th. Also, eBates apparently ran their app-only 2% cash back offer on May 25th. I was also informed that when BeFrugal advertises 2.2% cash back, they really give 2.25% cash back. So, going forward, I’ll report the BeFrugal offers as 2.25% cash back.
Updated data
By combining information from readers and recent offers as reported via Quick Deals, I’ve updated the historical data as follows:
Observed Trends
- BeFrugal offers 2.25% cash back for business gift cards every other Friday
- TopCashBack offers 2.25% cash back for business gift cards every other week
- TopCashBack usually offers their deal on Tuesday except on weeks when Ebates offers 2% through their app. This may be a coincidence since we only have two data points showing this.
- Simply Best Coupons offers 2% cash back for business gift cards every other week.
- Simply Best Coupons offers their deal the day before TopCashBack (true for only the last 3 occurrences, so I wouldn’t bank on it)
- Ebates offers 2% cash back for both personal and business gift cards (in-app) on the last or second to last Monday of each month
August Predictions
Based on the observed trends (above), we can make the following predictions for August:
- BeFrugal will offer 2.25% cash back on August 7 and 21 (and Sept 4)
- TopCashBack will offer 2.25% cash back during the weeks of August 3, 17, and 31
- TopCashBack may offer their deals on Tuesday August 4, and August 18 (and Sept 1)
- Simply Best Coupons will offer 2% cash back on the same weeks as TopCashBack
- Simply Best Coupons may offer their deals on the days preceding TopCashBack deals (i.e. August 3, 17, 31)
- Ebates will offer 2% cash back in-app on August 17, 24, or 31
- If Ebates offers 2% on August 17 or 31, then SimplyBestCoupons and TopCashBack will offer their deals later the same week rather than on Monday and Tuesday.
See Also
- The complete guide to Amex gift cards
- My Amex gift card strategy
- How to earn 4% cash back on all spend
- Predicting the next Amex gift card deals
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TCB limits cash back to $200 or smaller cards! Let’s hope this doesn’t spread!
$200 (is this a typo)? I thought the card denominations could be $2000?
Not a typo. Amex changed their terms 🙁
TCB 2.25% today
[…] and BeFrugal have topped this offer with 2.25% and eBates has had a similar offer as well. See: Improved Amex gift card deal predictions for more information about the patterns of increased cashback through the various […]
was hoping for a TCB one today
Yeah, me too. Maybe tomorrow or the day after? It looks like there are past examples of it showing up a bit later in the week.
Been stuck in Amex Financial Review purgatory for over a week now. Even my Amex GC orders using Visa and MasterCard are being denied (personal and business). Anybody had this happen to them?
SBC 2% announced for Tuesday 8/25
Ebates app 2 percent coming on Monday. I was a week off on that one
[…] Wrong thread. Bookmark this site: http://frequentmiler.boardingarea.co…l-predictions/ […]
[…] As predicted, the BeFrugal shopping portal is offering 2.25% cashback on the purchase of Business Amex gift cards. They don’t specifically mention an expiration date for the offer, but these increased payouts generally only last one day. Note that the page shows 2.2% cash back, but readers have reported that past deals like these have actually resulted in 2.25% cash back. […]
Was told the same thing, and my personal delta amex worked also. It’s strange. In addition I could not find amex gift cards on the befrugal site this morning. Maybe they’re just updating?
Regarding BeFrugal, that’s my assumption too — that they’re currently updating the Amex gift card offer. Hopefully the improved rate will appear on their site sometime this morning.
BeFrugal 2.25% is now live for today August 7th
Does anyone know if the $10K limit on personal gift cards is an Amex limit or a BF, TCB, etc limit? ie if I buy $6K worth from BF and buy another $6K from TCB will it work?
It is an Amex limit. No, I wouldn’t expect that example to work.
[…] Improved Amex gift card deal predictions […]
Put in 4 orders for business gift cards today, 3 declined and 1 approved……the 1 approved was on Amex Card while the 3 declined were on Visas and Mastercards. Declined email states “Your order was not fulfilled for the following reasons: We could not verify your order information and cannot approve your order at this time.”
Anyone have this issue before? Called the reps but they were no help.
seems to be a recurring theme
Was told by Amex in SLC that personal cards can’t be used to purchase Amex Business GCs. Though this answer doesn’t explain why my SPG Amex personal card went through, just not my MasterCard and Visas.
I think the reps just make up reasons why orders have been denied. They don’t know.
[…] Business gift cards for today only (8/4/15). This is the exact day that Greg the Frequent Miler predicted for increased cashback at Top […]
TCB is 2.25 percent today as predicted. Was off a week on SBC since they announced for next Monday
Apparently you forgot to shift the dots on your August graphic. You only left one week between July’s final offers and August’s first offers.
If you shift the dots down a row you’d be correct with your SBC prediction (others still unknown).