Easy points: 3% off Five Back Visas, stack with 1% portal rewards

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Giftcardmall is offering a terrific promotion that I’m sure won’t last: 3% off Five Back Visa Gift Cards (scheduled for 12/7-12/9, but I wouldn’t bet on it lasting longer than a day). That’s a nice deal that doesn’t come around often. Unfortunately, Giftcardmall can be a hard nut to crack — like Chuck at Doctor of Credit, I can’t seem to get an order through with them. If you can, you’ll come out ahead on these cards no matter where you use them; if you use them at Five Back merchants, you’ll be even further ahead. You may also be able stack portal rewards for another 1%.

a black and white card with white text

The Deal

Key Details

  • Available in denominations from $25-$500 (you are not limited to 1 card, but the max per card is 500)
  • Activation fee is $5.95 per card
  • Shipping is additional

Quick Thoughts

As noted above, Giftcardmall is known for banning accounts and cancelling orders, but if you’re not on their blacklist, this is some easy spend. If you’re new to Giftcardmall, I recommend going easy — maybe one or two $500 cards at most. Some portals offer 1% back on Visa Gift card purchases, so check your options at CashBackMonitor.com (and check the portal terms to be sure they pay out on Visa Gift Cards). That would bring your net cost down to $486.10 including the activation fee (but not shipping).

Five Back Visas are issued by Metabank and the PIN is the last 4 digits of the card. They earn 5% back (in the form of an additional credit on the card) at the following merchants as of the time of writing:

Aerie
Aeropostale
AMC
American Eagle Outfitters
Athleta
Bakers Square
Banana Repblic
Bass Pro Shops
Bath & Body Works
Bonefish Grill
Brookstone
Cabela’s
Carrabba’s
Catherins
Cracker Barrel
Crutchfield
Express
Fleming’s
GAP
Journey
Lane Bryant
Neiman Marcus
Nike
Ninety Nine Restaurant
O’Charley’s Restaurant
Old Navy
Outback Stakhouse
Panera
PB teen
Pottery Barn
Pottery Barn kids
Red Robin
Regal
Sally Beauty
Sephora
Shi by Journeys
Spafinder
The Children’s Place
Under Armour
Underground by Journey
Village Inn
West Elm
Williams Sonoma
Yankee Candle

In other words, if you use your $500 Five Back Visa at one of those merchants, you’ll end up getting an additional $25 put back on the card. That’s a pretty good deal when combined with the discount and your credit card rewards for purchasing the Five Back Visa.

Keep in mind that Amex has continued to clamp down on purchases they don’t like (See yesterday’s post: Amex fires another shot in their war on gaming), and Citi stopped paying out 3X on the AT&T Access More card for gift card purchases (See: Citi AT&T nixes 3X manufactured spend), but there are still plenty of cards worth using for easy free rewards.

H/T: Doctor of Credit

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Chimmy

Subscribing

frugalman

What a joke. My order has kept getting cancelled. But it has been more than half a year that I ordered anything from them. So I decided to give a try. This time, I bought $3K and checked out as a guest, but guess my name and billing address have still been blacklisted (but for what?! Is there something wrong to purchase several thousand gift card?). Placed the order in the afternoon, and immediately got email confirmation. But tonight just received the following email:
=========================
Order Cancelled
Dear Customer ,
Invoice Number: XXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXXXX
The following order has been cancelled:
Order Summary:
Card Name Card Amount Card Message Quantity Approval Status
$500.00 6 Approved

This message was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message.

GiftCardMall
http://www.giftcardmall.com
========================

Note Chase did approve the transaction as the “approval status” shows. It IS GiftcardMall who cancelled the order. WTF. Shame on myself to give them another chance, allured by the discount.

dave

Seems to be out of cards already. Bummer.

glen

Ordered $1K worth. Fingers crossed!

Jeff

reports on flyertalk orders over 1k are not being processed…not sure how accurate that figure is. I tried a 6k order and it wasn’t processed (but pending no my amex of course)

Geo

Placed a daily maximum limit order three hours ago which went through (so far…).

brian

did 4k worth (FV)

Dimi

I can’t even get my $1k or $500 order processed!

BTL

Can’t get the order through! Frustrating…

David

MO @ WM w/ five back GC’s?

Jeff

I am still waiting on my black Friday order. Their delivery time is atrocious

Jeff

Ordered 11/24, Shipped 12/1, scheduled delivery Monday 12/11. AND…I did UPS delivery!