Over the Thanksgiving/Black Friday period Sam’s Club was selling $250 Instacart gift cards for $199.98. That deal’s still going, with Costco joining the party yesterday by also offering a 20% discount on Instacart gift cards.
The Deal
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- Save 20% on Instacart gift cards:
- $250 gift cards for $199.98 – Sam’s Club
- $100 gift cards for $79.98 – Costco
Key Terms
- Limit 2 per membership per wholesale club.
Quick Thoughts
20% off Instacart gift cards is a great deal, so I’m surprised that neither of these deals have sold out yet. The limit of two per membership is probably helping matters there, although I think I saw data points last week of people being able to buy further Instacart gift cards from Sam’s Club, so it might be possible to stock up on even more.
If buying from Sam’s Club, it’s worth clicking through from a shopping portal. Gift card purchases have been tracking with shopping portals recently and at least one (Rakuten) was explicitly listing gift card purchases as being eligible to earn rewards. However, Rakuten now has wording stating that gift card purchases are excluded again, so YMMV.
For Costco members, if you have an Executive membership you’ll also earn 2% back on the purchase because third party gift card purchases are eligible for that benefit.
For anyone with Chase Freedom or Freedom Flex cards who haven’t maxed out their $1,500 spending allowances yet for Q4, those cards are earning 5% at wholesale clubs this quarter.
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Curious on the 2 per membership rule. What is the time period for that? Per purchase, per quarter, per year, per lifetime?
With Costco is appears to be a limit of two per rolling 7 day period.
Where were you able to find that info? I couldn’t find it anywhere. Thanks!
It’s not actually specified anywhere, but after a week you can order again – I’ve been doing that for the last month or two.
I had a pretty sweet stack with this offer. 8% ($16) from Retailmenot and 10% ($20) from chase offers. So, essentially paid only $164 for $250 IC GC. Even with the uptick in prices (although random coupons from certain stores can offset that), this was a definitely worthwhile purchase.
Has anyone actually done a comparison between Costco via Instacart vs. Costco in-store? For the couple of things I’ve shopped, even with 20% off, Instacart items are still more expensive than buying in-store?
I think markup % is location-dependent, so if you’re not in Bay Area, this may not be of use to you, but in the Bay Area:
sameday.costco.com vs. Costco in-store: 17% markup
Costco via Instacart vs. Costco in-store: 24% markup
It’s really too bad you can’t use instacart credit on sameday.costco.com since it’s operated by instacart. It’s always cheaper to buy discounted instacart credit and buy via instacart than using Costco same-day.
Remember that it’s always cheaper to get groceries delivered than it is to shop in store unless you value your time, gas, traffic / shopping related stress etc. at $0. Honestly the only exceptions to this I can think of are (1) you have small kids and live somewhere where there aren’t safe / accessible public spaces so a retail trip functions as a substitute for a park visit or neighborhood walk or (2) your home is unsafe and grocery shopping can be used as a rationale for removing yourself from your home to protect yourself.