Several cash back and mile-earning portals offer rebates/miles for shopping for American Express gift cards. If you have the Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard, you can now shop through their RewardsBoost portal to earn 4 miles per dollar!
That’s not all. The Alaska Airlines and Delta portals have increased their rewards rates to 3 miles per dollar as well! And, as I reported earlier today, TopCashBack is now offering 3% cash back.
To remove purchase fees (but not shipping fees), use code: FPVALAF
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 Barclaycard 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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From the RewardsBoost not reporting the points
@Devon P – Wow! Did you have trouble from the RewardsBoost 4x points, or the credit card you used to purchase the gift cards?
Might as well, me along with several friends have had little success getting points posted. I’m 1 for 8 in orders since February, my buddy is 1 for 7, and another buddy is 2 for 8 so just slightly better.
Looks like AmericanExpress gift cards are gone from Barclay Arrival’s RewardsBoost site. Bummer!
Hi. Do I need to have the “Arrival” card for this to work or will any Barclay card work? For example, if I were to use the Barclay NFL extra points card through thr Rewardsboost portal would I still get the 4X points? Thx
When you log into your Barclays account and select a credit card to view, then click through to the RewardsBoost portal, you may see different offers. As long as the 4X offer shows up when you click through with the NFL card, it should work.
Oddly enough their support team called me about missing portal miles today and told me if I logged into my account I would delete the tracking. I escalated to a supervisor and 30 minutes later I finally got to someone that understood that should not hurt the portal tracking. It’s been a MESS trying to get the arrival miles/points from Barclays portal purchases. Only my first purchase(of 6) has actually posted. I never have issues with other portals so I don’t get it.
i’m just starting the buy AMEX GCs with barclays card deal. i don’t see an option under shipping options to sign up for the $99 express shipping for 1 year. i only see 1 day and 2 day options for $9 and $16. am i missing something?
After clicking through the portal to Amex gift cards, you should see a button that says something like “log in for faster checkout”. You need to be logged in (with a regular Amex login id and password) to see the premium shipping offer. And, that offer will show up when you go to check out and get to the shipping screen.
Is there a weekly $ limit to buy amex gc? Is the $ amount different for personal and business?
Yes it is different: for personal cards, up to $5K every 2 weeks. For business cards, up to $75K every 2 weeks.
I placed an order in the reward boost portal for Amex GC for 1K. Nevermind the bonus points, I expect to wait on those for several weeks. I’m a bit surprised however that there are no pending charges after 10 days. Is this normal for any of you in this thread that have used the Arrival Card to purchase Amex GC’s? If so, how long did you wait until you finally saw a charge on your Barclay online account for Amex GC?
No, that’s very strange. I wouldn’t expect that either.
I just bought a few AMEX with higher amounts and promo codes. Has everyone earlier been getting their points on time?
I’ve always received points when buying high value Amex cards, but it usually does take the portals much longer to show the rewards with bigger purchases.
You can now get 4 points for the dollar again through the Barclay portal. Do you have any promo codes that currently work to waive the fees?
SYNCGIFT still works for me
Any updated promo codes for this? The code listed is expired. Also does anyone have confirmation of the cashback pending/posting through topcashback when purchasing a $3,000 giftcard?
Try SYNCGIFT
Not working for me, any others?
Still works for me
So made 6 purchases two weeks ago(2 for Amex Cards, 4 for other places) yet only my 2 Staples purchases have been awarded.
Does anyone know how to contact barclays shopping portal about missing purchases? Their contact us page just directs me to my Barclays credit card page. I’ve sent a message to credit card support but feel there has to be a way to contact the portal support.
I am in the same boat. Let me know if you find out anything. Does it have to do with what type of BROWSER is used? I used CHROME and it took me to the Amex site.
It shouldn’t. I used to run a support team for a cashback/shopping portal site. I used Firefox for some of mine and Chrome for others. All my Staples orders track and pretty quickly. I’ve sent my Barclays card support secure messages for all my Amex Gift Card purchases and they say they are “looking into it”.
Hey Thanks. Still waiting on 36,000 points or so. I hope it comes through. If it hadn’t been for the 4X, I wouldn’t have bought them.
Ha I’m waiting on exactly 36k. I ordered more gift cards yesterday but went through Topcashback because of the recent Barclays issues. I’ll post when I get a definitive yes/no on mine and please do the same.
Will do. I used CHROME and used a purchase CODE for fee free cards. Hopefully neither one of these invalidated the purchase. I am having same issue with the Alaska website I used. Thanks
I just wanted to let you know that today approximately 36,000 points finally hit under the Transactions for Barclay and Alaska Air 15,000 points also. So, it took about 4 weeks approximately.
Thanks Sam. That gives me a little hope. My original transactions were on Feb 3, 4, and 7th. When were yours? Nothing yet in my account and of course their service dept tells me it could take 8 weeks for them to research it.
Sam: Thanks for pointing this out. Many of mine have now posted as well, but I’m still waiting for a few (the largest ones)
I actually just accessed it. That’s happened to me in the past. When it did I went to my regular card account and re-logged in. Worked fine after that.
Has anyone been able to get the portal working in the last 2 days? It seems broken for me when you click on the rewards boost link and it won’t recognize your login. Anyone else? Maybe they turned it off on purpose?