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As predicted, American Express Gift Cards have returned to cash back portals. Here are the current rates as shown on CashBackMonitor:
No sign yet of gift cards on mileage or bank portals though. In the recent past we’ve been able to earn Delta SkyMiles and Alaska Airlines MileagePlan miles when buying Amex gift cards. A bit further back, Amex gift cards were available through Barclaycard’s RewardsBoost Portal.
For more about Amex gift cards, please see: Everything you ever wanted to know about Amex gift cards.
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Now that giftcardmall doesn’t accept AMEX GCs and many retail stores don’t allow you to purchase GCs with GCs, do you know of any good ways to convert AMEX GCs into VISA/MC GCs (not Vanilla GCs)? Thanks!
I haven’t had much trouble at grocery stores using Amex gcs to buy Visa gcs.
Have you tried buying one from one of the portals using a non-US Bank card to see how it codes?
I haven’t tried because I’m waiting to see if portal rates go higher. I’d like to see at least 2%.
I had read on another post that Amex might be coding these as CASH ADVANCES now instead of PURCHASES of GCs. And that is why they disappeared for the past month – to set up the backend to be able to process these as CA. Several people posted they tried to buy through a portal and their purchase was declined. So when they called their CC to find out why, they were told that Amex coded it as Cash Advance… And, actually, were lucky they didn’t have enough “Cash Advance Available” out of their total credit line. If they did, they would have ended up with a CA that starts earning interest immediately and at the Cash APR.
Can anyone CONFIRM that Amex is coding the new GCs (since they came back to portals) as CA?
On an earlier post, a couple of people mentioned that happening with their US Bank credit cards. US Bank is known to preauthorize the purchase as a cash advance, but then the actual purchase is coded as a purchase. At least, that is how it has worked in the past. I haven’t heard anything that would suggest that has changed, but you never know.