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Now that Barnes & Noble is back to 10X in the Ultimate Rewards Mall (see “Ultimate Rewards Mall June Edition”), this trick is once again viable. I first wrote about this on March 23rd in the post “How to buy Ultimate Rewards Points for less than a penny each.” Today I’ll rehash the same stuff with minor updates.
Prerequisites
To get in on this deal, you need a Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card and the intention of keeping it at least until annual dividends are paid in early 2013. You also need an American Express business credit card with OPEN Savings.
Benefits
- Earn Ultimate Rewards points at a very low cost!
- Increase spend on your American Express business card. This can be a great boon if you are working off a minimum spend requirement for a sign-up bonus, or if you’re working towards a big-spend bonus.
Risks
- The trick here involves going through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to Barnes & Noble for 10 points per dollar, but paying with your Amex business card. Does this work? Usually, yes. See my post “Ultimate Question” for more. However, there is a real risk of not getting points so do this only if you accept that risk. The reason you need to pay with your Amex business card is that this trick relies on the 5% cash back you’ll get from the Amex OPEN Savings program that is available only to Amex business cards.
- Another risk is the possibility of PlasticJungle lowering the rates that they give for Barnes & Noble gift cards. The current rate of 81 cents to the dollar has held steady now for many months, though, so I believe this risk to be low. However, if many readers start doing this, they may indeed lower the offer. The easiest way to view current rates is to view this spreadsheet from PlasticJungle. Technically, this is PlasticJungle’s volume seller price list, but they usually offer the same prices to individuals.
- Finally, TopCashBack may, at any time, lower the cash back given for PlasticJungle sales.
If you’d like to proceed despite the risks, here’s what to do:
1. Buy a Barnes & Noble gift card:
- Log into the Ultimate Rewards Mall with your Sapphire Preferred account and click through to Barnes & Noble
- Add a single $200 physical gift card (not an e-card) to your shopping cart.
- Check out and pay with your American Express business card (make sure it has OPEN Savings). The total should come to $200.95
2. Once you get the gift card, sell it:
- Log into TopCashBack and click through to PlasticJungle (TopCashBack will give you 4% cash back for selling gift cards to PlasticJungle)
- Sell your Barnes & Noble gift card to PlasticJungle for 81% of its value.
3. Add it up:
Here is how the math works out with the purchase and sale of a $200 gift card:
- Total expenses: $200.95
- Total rebates: $178.53
- OPEN rebate: 5% of $200.95 = $10.05
- PlasticJungle Payment: $162
- TopCashBack rebate: $6.48
- Total cost: $200.95 – $178.53 = $22.42
- Total points earned: 2352
- Ultimate Rewards: $200.95 X 10 = 2010 + 7% annual dividend = 2151
- American Express points = 201
- Total cost per point = $22.42 / 2352 = .95 cents per point.
Notes
- The type of points earned from American Express depends on which card is used for purchasing the gift card. For example, you might earn SPG points, Membership Rewards points, Delta Skymiles, etc. If you use a card that gives more than 1 point per dollar (such as the Hilton Surpass), then you will obviously earn more points with this approach.
- Theoretically you could make many individual purchases in this way. Don’t be surprised, though, if you get a call from Barnes & Noble investigating this “suspicious” activity.
- Barnes & Noble terms in the Ultimate Rewards Mall say “Special increased earnings now through 6/30/2012” so the deal may expire at the end of this month.
Disclaimer
There are several risks as shown above. As always, proceed at your own risk.
Related Posts and Links
- How to buy Ultimate Rewards Points for less than a penny each
- Can you use a non-Chase card in the Ultimate Rewards Mall? See: Ultimate Question
- Sign up for TopCashBack (referral link)
- Sign up for PlasticJungle (referral link)
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Isn’t it easier to just use an UR point earning Chase card to buy Vanilla Reload card in CVS? The cost is $3.95 for $500 card which can be used to load Blue Bird to pay mortgage, etc. $3.95 gets you 504 UR points. So each UR point costs 0.78 cents.
Alice: Yes, that’s a much easier way to buy points. This post was written in June, well before Bluebird existed.
thanks guys
worldtraveler2018: Barnes and Noble is no longer 10x so this doesn’t work anymore
@worldtraveler2018 Use the “Earn Faster” or “Earn Points” dropdown menu, not the “Shopping” dropdown menu.
Hi FrequentMiler, just read your post. very nice write-up. Hope it’s not too late for me now. Is the deal still good? I logged into the Ultimate Rewards Mall with my Sapphire Preferred account. But it appears to me that a $100 Barnes and Nobles gift card now can be bought with 2,250 UR points, not with a credit card any more. What am I missing here?
Uh oh, I just received my Barnes & Noble physical giftcards. Now that PlasticJungle is down to 75%, what is the next best alternative for cashing out? Cardpool at 81%? What portal such at TopCashBack is best for Cardpool?
Chris: Yes, I think Cardpool is the best option. Yes, I think TopCashBack is the best option despite the warning on their Cardpool page.
FM, Thanks.
I bought gift cards one week ago and received points this week. But that was before they took away the word “customized” in the T&C about gift cards.
Did you have any success that they still paid you points for buying gift cards, even thought it is supposed to be excluded (in UR mall)?
Leo: My last experience was from last week too. B&N still appears in the Ultimate Rewards Mall under “gift cards” so I expect it will still work, but it would be good to hear from someone who ordered more recently.
Sadly, they’ve changed the T&C in MR mall today:
Not eligible on gift cards, gift certificates or any other similar cash equivalents. Portion of the transaction paid for by a gift card is not eligible. Orders where customer selects shipping method “buy online, pick up in store” are not eligible. Not eligible on NOOK Warranty.
Leo: Those are the original terms. They don’t allow you to use gift cards, but they do give points when buying them. Note though that Plastic Jungle has lowered their payout so this deal is not as good as before.
The website is accurate. I sell to PJ all the time. Anyways the drop in payout validated my concerns…they’ve probably been seeing a huge volume of B&N sales, so of course they’re going to lower the rate. This is very risky on cards with poor liquidity.
What’s more accurate, the plastic jungle excel spreadsheet, or their website? Because the website says up to 78.75%.
PJ down to 75% payment. I am going to cardpool for all sales and taking my chance with TCB.
THEsocalledfan: Ugh. I see that too. I’ll have to rerun the numbers with the lower payout
David: I don’t understand your logic with respect to 2% cash back cards. How would you do that?
This is such a mind freak. At this point, it would seem a 2% cash back card is better than the sapphire always as you can get using the exxon method 2.47 points per dollar spent.
Do you still qualify for topcashback if you chose the amazon GC option?
This is risky. The gift card sites aren’t stupid — they will either lower the B&N buy rate or stop accepting more cards. They aren’t going to just sit on tens of thousands of cards that will take forever to sell. These aren’t like Walmart or gas cards that sell out almost immediately sometimes. I’ve had more than one company send me back the cards I tried to sell them because they didn’t want them…it was a large amount of “low value” cards that likely would take a long time to sell.
I desperately need $9K spend on my Delta Amex to reach a spend threshold for the bonus MQM, but I can’t risk this.