Several cash back and mile-earning portals offer rebates/miles for shopping for American Express gift cards. The best current cash-back offer is via TopCashBack, which is now offering 3% cash back. They are also offering a code to remove card purchase fees (but you’ll still have to pay for shipping): FPVALAF.
In case you’re interested, here are the current rates from some other portals (the best mile-earning option currently is the Arrival card 2X, which translates to 2.22% towards travel):
- BigCrumbs: 2.1%
- Barclays Arrival Rewards Boost:
2X milesnow 4X! (requires Arrival card) - Alaska Mileage Plan:
1X, now 3X! - Delta SkyMiles:
1X, now 3X!
Important notes:
- Amex gift cards do not have PINs. They cannot be used to load Bluebird cards.
- Some credit card companies (such as Citibank) charge cash advance fees when purchasing these online. Last I checked, Chase, Amex, and Barclays were safe. I can’t vouch for others.
- Portals often state that using codes not found on their site will invalidate cash back / miles earned. This has not been my experience. I use codes for free gift cards every time.
- Some portals restrict the top card amount to $500. You can easily circumvent this by logging into your Amex account (after clicking through from the portal) and then you’ll see values up to $3000. Yes, you should still get cash back or miles (that has been my experience).
- Cash back can take several months to go from pending to payable.
- Miles often take several weeks or even a month or more to post, but then appear immediately in your mileage account.
See also:
- How to Spend Down Amex Gift Cards
- Links to sign up for cash back portals (and other things), can be found here.
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How can I find out which banks charge a cash advance fee? I want to use my new Club Carlson card (issued by US bank) to buy these – do they charge a CA fee?
Best bet is to call your bank and ask them to lower your cash advance limit as much as possible, then make an Amex gc order that is larger than that limit. It won’t be approved if it is treated as a cash advance
We can use these on our taxes right? With the 3% rebate basically covering all the fees associated with using a CC to pay our taxes? (Without any future steps?)
Yep. You can pay taxes with Amex cards for a 1.87% fee. So, you’ll still make a small profit
It’s rare that I actually post on here, but I would like to chime in that I have had horrible experiences with TCB. Just horrible. Several pay-outs took months and then only happened because I prodded them. And I sold gift cards through them to Cardpool, following the T&Cs on limits, and TCB/Cardpool refused to pay-out, leaving me short $40. I would absolutely not trust TCB to pay me again, let alone on a regular schedule. I know FM has had good luck with them, but I do wonder how much of that is because someone at TCB makes sure that an influential blogger who regularly posts about their service receives smooth payment. Certainly my experience has shown me that as a regular customer I have to be proactive and pray to all of the gods to receive payment. On the plus side, the customer service there has been nice, which is appreciated.
I’m sorry to hear about that experience, but I really don’t think that TCB treats me different. I know many people besides myself (who are not bloggers) that have had good experiences with them. That said, many have reported problems too so I’m certainly not dismissing the issue with them
Just bought a $2,000 card with my SPG card. Looking forward to loading to AMEX Target and buying VRCs.