How to get a year of free shipping from 1800Flowers… and how not to

Thanks to the recent extraordinary promotion from 1800Flowers for 1750 Southwest points per order, and my post showing how feeding the hungry can lead to flying free, I believe there to be increased interest in 1800Flowers’ free shipping program called Celebrations Passport.  The normal price for this program is $29.99 per year, but, of course, we can do better.  So, yesterday, in preparation for this post, I set about stacking deals to buy a Passport membership as cheaply as possible.  Along the way, I captured screenshots of each step.  And, then, I got to the final step, and it didn’t work.  I tried a few workarounds.  They didn’t work either!  If you’d like to read the story, continue on. Otherwise, you might prefer to jump down to the section titled “An approach that really should work”.

A failed approach

Amazon Local is currently offering $30 to spend at 1800Flowers for $15.  Perfect!  We can buy one of these and use it to pay for the Passport program.  Right?  I started my journey at CashBackMonitor, where I found that TopCashBack offered the best cash back rate for Amazon Local: 6%.

I logged into TopCashBack, found Amazon Local, and clicked through:

Once I arrived at Amazon Local I searched for and found the 1800Flowers deal, as expected:

Note the following terms that were listed:

• Sold by 1-800-Flowers.com®

• Voucher value may be applied toward cost of service charge, shipping, and/or tax; if order total (including service charge, shipping, and tax) exceeds $30, customer is responsible for the remaining balance
• Limit 2 vouchers per purchaser
• Limit 1 voucher per order at 1-800-Flowers.com®
• Voucher may be redeemed online, by phone, or in-store
• Voucher cannot be combined with any other coupons or promotions
• Voucher may be redeemed immediately after purchase
• $15 promotional value of voucher will expire on April 9, 2015
• If voucher is not redeemed prior to April 9, 2015, customer will receive a $15 electronic gift certificate to use at 1-800-Flowers.com®
• When the voucher is redeemed, the paid value will be applied first and then the promotional value. On April 9, 2015, any unused portion of the promotional value will be forfeited. If any portion of the paid value is remaining on April 9, 2015, you will be sent a 1-800-Flowers.com® gift certificate for $15. Gift certificates are issued and administered by Fresh Gift Cards, Inc. The gift certificate shall not have an expiration date. Merchant is responsible for voucher redemption

• Other conditions apply

The key one, I thought, was that the “Voucher cannot be combined with any other coupons or promotions”.  So, you can’t use this voucher if you intend to use a promo code, but it appears that you can use it for the Celebrations Passport program.  It even says that the “value may be applied toward cost of service charge, shipping, and/or tax.”  So, I went ahead and bought the voucher.

(In case you’re wondering, yes I tried to apply the voucher to a regular fruit box order while using the promo code RR36 (for 1750 Southwest points), but as expected the system wouldn’t let me use both the voucher and the promo code.)

My next step was to find the best portal for shopping at 1800Flowers.  Note that portals won’t payout when using promo codes, but when using vouchers and gift cards they will / should.

I like Discover Cash Back, so I went with Discover Deals.  Saving Star would have worked too.  Either way, I should be eligible for a 20% rebate on the order.  I clicked through from Discover Deals to 1800Flowers.  There, I found the Passport program (to find it, hover your mouse over the box at the top that says “Hello, Sign in to your account,” then a menu should appear with “Celebration Rewards” as an option) and added it to my cart.

Then, I went to pay, but the option to add a gift card as payment was greyed out:

Undaunted, I removed the Passport program from my cart, added flowers, and added the gift card:

Now that I had the gift card applied successfully, I added Passport back to my cart and removed the flowers.  And, I tried to pay.  No luck.  Even though the order total summed to zero (with the gift voucher applied), the system wanted me to enter in a credit card.  At the same time, the system wouldn’t let me enter a credit card.  The option was greyed out:

Now, I was a bit daunted.  Still, I tried one last thing: Live Chat.  No luck.  Glory was sorry for the inconvenience but “For the purchase of Celebrations pass, it will only accept credit card or debit card for payment”.  Rats.

Another failed approach

I knew that the RR36 promo code (1750 points per order) wouldn’t work when buying the Celebrations Passport membership, but, just for you, I gave it a shot anyway.  As expected, no luck:

An approach that really should work…

While I haven’t proven it yet, I’m 99.937% sure that the following will work:

1. Choose a credit card rebate option, and register

There are two good rebate options that link to credit cards.  One is an Amex Offer (if you were targeted, you’ll find it by logging into your Amex account and looking under “Offers for You”).  This one will give you $15 back for $50 spend with 1800Flowers.  The key here is that the $50 spend is cumulative.  You don’t have to spend that much all at once. So, if you use a registered Amex card to pay the $29.99 fee, you’ll only have to spend $20.01 more at 1800Flowers to earn the $15 rebate.  Another great option is to link any Visa or MasterCard to the Sears’ Shop Your Way Rewards program.  That way you’ll earn 40% back in points that can be used on future Sears/Kmart orders.  Details about these options can be found in these posts:

• Preparing for 100 miles per dollar

• Get a 40% Rebate at 1-800 Flowers!

2. Go through a portal to 1800Flowers

Currently, Discover Deals and Saving Star offer the best rebates (20%), but you can always check CashBackMonitor (here) for current rates:

3. Pay with your credit card from step 1

This one should be self explanatory.  In total, you’ll spend $29.99, and you’ll get back (hopefully):

• 20% of $29.99 = $6.00

And, either:

• $15 (once you spend $20.01 more with your registered Amex card)

or:

• 40% of $29.99 = $12 in Shop Your Way Rewards points

Best of all, you’ll now have free shipping for a year. 

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