Simon Mall recently began offering $1,000 Visa Gift Cards for sale online via their website (you need to register and wait for registration to be processed, which is currently taking some time. See Simon Visa Gift Cards online bulk ordering. Everything you need to know.)
Today they reached out to say that they are offering a limited-time promotion good for free ground shipping with promo code FREEGROUND.
This promotion can be used on up to 5 orders per account.
If you’re newly approved to place orders, this could be a good way to save some money (particularly if you’re looking to spread out your $25K daily limit over a few orders / credit cards, though note that adding an additional credit card will put you back in the queue to be approved again for ordering). You’ll still need to pay the $10 processing fee per order, but saving on shipping drops your cost.
Liquidation will be the hurdle that will prevent some readers from being able to purchase at this time. As we’ve said on all recent MS posts, please don’t purchase these if it will mean that you need to take extra unnecessary trips to the store right now. It’s not worth jeopardizing your health & safety or that of others. You could, however, use these cards to pay taxes or use them on your regular trips to the grocery store.
Also see our post about Which card to use for Simon Visa Gift Cards online for thoughts about which credit card(s) are best for this purpose.
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$36 UPS Ground shipping to Hawaii. Yeah after my 5 orders are up, I’m calling it quits with Simon online orders lol.
Thanks Nick for the helpful alert on this (temporary) shipping fee removal. (and for the extended reviews of these cards and the mail option in early posts) I nearly went for it last week when trying to finish out another tier of spending for the Radisson card, but in the end paused, for three reasons:
1. Yes, the combination of fees was prohibitive, for me at my more modest spending. (when factoring in the shipping, especially if I was just testing less than five)
2. Concern about near term liquidation. Yes, there’s COVID concerns (and not wanting to be seen as pushing good sense in these times.) But I’ve yet to try using one 1k card at the increasingly hostile Walmart’s in some areas. (at one Wally World where I’ve done mo’s for several years, there’s a couple of battle ax csr that will flat refuse to complete transactions with the word “gift card” — no reasoning possible) Not inclined to buying more than one til I successfully do one…. Using these cards (already with fees) to pay taxes (with another 2% in fees piled on) makes little sense. (while racking up very high cents in costs)
3. Worry about shut down if I’d have used my US Bank/Radisson buz cards. (very good to read in one of your other posts here that you’ve encountered no issues/problems from US Bank….. Yet thought I’d heard rumblings elsewhere about US Bank becoming hostile m.s….. Hard to know what to believe in this space — Do trust your report…..and yet wonder….)
[…] Update: You can now get free ground shipping with promo code FREEGROUND Hat tip to FM […]
Any word on when/if they’ll finish rolling out the mobile pay options on their terminals fully?
Hi Nick, thanks for you post once again. Have you verified these Simon cards bought online have similar PIN enabled feature that the mall Simon cards have? Thanks.
Shouldn’t we be putting on hold this activity until things stabilize, and by that I mean there’s no order issued by the government to stay home?
As noted in the post, not encouraging anyone to make any extra trips out. It’s easy to pay several thousand in taxes with these and most people will still need to go to the grocery store at least twice a month, so some may still be in a position to liquidate some and/or some may be willing to float it for a bit. Everyone’s situation is different. Some may be nearing the end of a spending requirement period and with all stores closed, this may be an easy way to meet the requirement. GCM would be cheaper, but for someone who can’t get an order through at GCM, this could be a cheap enough option.
To give an example, let’s imagine that your Radisson credit card anniversary is coming up in a few weeks and you’ve spent $10K on it, which will earn you 1 free night cert. You’d like to complete a second $10K so that you can put together 2 free nights for a weekend escape sometime when it’s safe to travel again, but with most stores closed, you can’t practically spend $10K in the time period necessary. If you have the cash lying around, you may be willing to buy $10K in GCs today and wait a month or two to liquidate them. Or maybe you liquidate $6K paying taxes and then buy $3K in MOs the next time you go to the grocery store and just have to float $1K to get a free night cert. I’m just using this as an example of why someone might do it — you might not care about Radisson free night certs, but someone else might. Different people have different needs.
Again, I don’t disagree that we should all stay at home as much as possible and after one final trip to the store today for some stuff essentials (and one delivery coming on Wednesday), I don’t intend to go anywhere for at least a week or two. But ordering GCs from home in itself isn’t necessarily a problem if you’re not going to make unnecessary stops to liquidate them.
Of course, if you don’t want to order them, that’s obviously fine. As we’ve noted, these aren’t the best deal for buying online — it’s really just a deal for those who do large quantity, and you’re right that heavy quantity right now is tough to do. That’s why I’m not placing another order right now.
Hi Nick, maybe I’m missing something but you can no longer use VGCs with official payments, right? So you could only liquidate $4000 through tax payments? Or is there a trick to making it work? https://www.doctorofcredit.com/visa-gift-cards-no-longer-work-tax-payments-officialpayments/
But looking at this article suggests they might? Do Simon VGCs work?
https://frequentmiler.com/pay-taxes-via-credit-card-2019-edition/
Here’s an up-to-date version of our tax article: https://frequentmiler.com/pay-taxes-via-credit-card/
Currently Official Payments does not seem to be working with gift cards. The ability to use gift cards with them seems to come and go regularly over time so it may be worth trying again later.
No way to liquidate. Passing on it.
Sweet!
Why are so few blogs pushing this? You are going to get caught and shut down
I can’t say why other blogs cover or don’t cover something, but I can say that Frequent Miler has always been a blog that covers MS opportunities (Greg wrote the first Manufactured Spending Complete Guide that I saw years ago), so you’ll read about lots of them here — whether they be Office Max / Office Depot / Staples, grocery store GC deals, card-linked offers, etc. We cover that because that’s what this blog has always been about — earning miles without flying.
I wouldn’t say we are “pushing” anything. There’s nothing in it for us whether you buy from Simon or not. Simon Mall reached out to us almost a year ago when they decided to offer the $1K cards and welcome MSers to buy them (which was notable compared to most stores). As they’ve evolved their offerings, we’ve obviously covered that because it’s a unique opportunity in that regard.
All that said, it isn’t for everyone and there is certainly some risk of getting shut down. To each his own in terms of determining an acceptable risk level.
Of course Simon reached out to you. They love it when you buy that much of their product. It’s your credit cards and your frequent flier accounts that you’re being risky with. I wish you the best of luck though – your blog is too good to have to get shut down.
Do we know how long the code is good for?
i think another article mentioned May 5
They didn’t mention the end date in this morning’s email, but I’ve reached out for clarification. I’ll update when I hear back.
It’s valid until 12/31/20 (again, each person’s profile is limited to 5 uses).