10% Back on Sears Purchases Through Discover Deals, Double-Cash, & How to Maximize

Discover Double

Discover Deals is a great shopping portal for Discover cardholders and often offers the highest cashback rates at many top merchants. What’s even more awesome is that now many of us got in a temporary offer from Discover to double all cashback for a year, including cashback earned from credit card points, from the portal, or anything else. That offer is no longer available for signup to existing Discover cardholders, but you can sign up for a new Discover card and get the deal. Even if you already have one Discover cashback card, you can signup for a second one and take advantage of this deal.

Sears 10%

We’re here today to discuss the Sears rate in particular. It was at 10% around a month ago, then it dropped down to 5%. Today, FrequentMiler broke the news that it’s back up to 10% until August 31, 2105. Honestly, this was a surprise to me as I assumed they lowered it due to the over-generous nature of the offer in conjunction with the double-cash promo. It’s definitely nice to see it back and we know it will be here until 8/31/15.

What’s even more awesome is that Discover is currently offering 5% cashback on the card in the following categories: home improvement stores, department stores, and Amazon. Sears is considered a department store and would work to trigger the 5% rate. If you add the 5% plus the 10% from the portal and then double that total at years end, you’ll end up with a whopping 30% discount on your purchases.

 

Okay, so what should we do with this promo? Buy stuff we need anyway? That’s no fun! Let’s be more creative…

Sell Gift Cards

One unique aspect about Sears is that they’re known to pay out portal points/cashback on gift card and e-gift card purchases. You’ll get the portal cashback whether you buy physical gift cards or e-gift cards (even reloads will work), but you’ll only get the 5% quarterly bonus if you buy e-gift cards since physical gift card purchases done at sears.com are run through the Kmart system and is not considered a department store purchase. See FrequentMiler’s guide to Sears gift cards for more info.

For our purposes, we want to maximize the 5% category bonus, so we’ll want the e-gift cards. You’ll get a whopping 30% off the price of the cards (after the double cashback comes at years end) and you’ll be able to sell it at a nice profit.

For example, Saveya is currently offering 84.5%.

  • Pay $1500
  • $75 back from quarterly category
  • $150 back from portal
  • $225 back at years end
  • Sell for $1267.50 to Saveya
  • Profit: $217.50

Note: There is definitely a risk of devaluation of the gift cards. That said, it’s hard to hear a real possibility of loss, assuming the portals all track properly. Also note that we’re all throttled at just $1500 per person, so it’s not a very scalable thing and may not devalue terribly.

Note #2: Saveya has strict limits on how much you can sell to them, see The Complete Guide to Selling your Unwanted Gift Cards for Cash for more info.

Note #3: You won’t get any immediate profit; in fact there’ll be a $7.50 loss. The profit will only be realized at years end.

Other Resellers

As noted, Saveya has strict limits on the amount of gift cards you can sell them and most of us will have to sell to other resellers.

You can get 84% from Cardcash or Giftcardzen, but only with physical gift cards. If you purchase the physical gift cards from Sears it won’t work to trigger the 5% quarterly bonus. For this reason, it won’t be so easy for most of us to take advantage of this deal.

A workaround route is to a buy $5 physical Sears gift card from a Sears store and then reload that card online at sears.com. This way, you end up with a physical card which can then be sold to Giftcardzen or Cardcash for 84%.

  • Pay $15 for three separate $5 physical Sears gift card
  • Pay $1485 for three separate reloads of $495 each
  • $74.25 back from quarterly category
  • $148.50 back from portal
  • $222.75 back at years end
  • Sell for $1260 to Giftcardzen or Cardcash
  • Profit: $205.50

Sell iPads

If gift cards isn’t your speed, you can try reselling merchandise purchased from Sears. Orensmoneysaver has a great idea for reselling an iPad from Sears. I haven’t researched this extensively (I’ll leave that for the reselling experts to chime in on), but the gist is that you can buy 3 iPads from Sears for around $1400 and resell them for a walk-home amount of $1230.

The beauty of reselling merchandise – something that we gift card sellers just can’t seem to get into our head – is that you can double dip with the Sears portal by purchasing the gift card intially through the portal and then buying the iPads through the portal. That’s awesome on its own and it’s doubly awesome since all the cash back will be doubled.

  • Pay $1400 for the Sears e-gift cards
  • Get $70 back for the quarterly category
  • Get $140 back from the Discover portal
  • Use the gift cards to buy the iPads
  • Get $140 back from the portal a second time
  • Get another $350 back from Discover at years end (brings us to a total of 50% cashback!)
  • Get $1230 on the sale of the iPads
  • Profit: $530

See orensmoneysaver for more details on this opportunity (and some more creative stuff along the way). Of course, there are probably lots of other reselling opportunities as well.

Important Note: Technically, we’re only supposed to get cashback from the Discover portal when paying with the Discover card. In the above scenario, only the initial gift card purchase was with a Discover card and the iPad purchase was not. There is a risk that Discover could claw back the cashback from the second go-round. Maybe it would be a good idea to pay the last few dollars of the iPad cost with your Discover card so that it looks a little better.

See the comments on this FrequentMiler post where a few mention getting the cashback clawed back. This may be a new trend; we’ll have to wait for more data points on that.

Risks of the reselling route:

  • Discover clawback on the 10% (x2) for the iPad purchase. [If this happens, you’ll be out $280 and your profit is down to $250.]
  • Merchandise returns on Amazon.
  • A flood on iPads on Amazon causing the prices to lower.
  • Probably other stuff I don’t know about since I don’t do much merchandise reselling.

Personally, I think I’ll be sticking with the gift card route since I’m more comfortable with gift card reselling and have bulk seller status with various exchanges which changes a lot. Those more comfortable with selling merchandise will likely prefer the increased profitability of the iPad deal.

 

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Mark
Mark (@guest_162083)
August 20, 2015 19:51

Any confirmed data points on whether going through the Discover portal to Sears.com and paying with a previously (portal) purchased Sears gift card will earn the additional cashback?

Zachary
Zachary (@guest_159141)
August 13, 2015 01:06

Hi, how about to buy sears gift card, and exchange it to gamestop gift card at card pool, and buy another gift card at gamestop.

Matt
Matt (@guest_158569)
August 11, 2015 21:29

Hi, I’m new to reselling merchandise, just been reading about it on this blog and other blogs today. I came across a discussion about tax implications which up until then I was not aware there was any. If according to this post I buy iPad’s through Sears and resell them through Amazon FBA is that technically a business with a Schedule C? Does Amazon issue a 1099? Or is this not something to worry about in practice?

Thanks.

Linda
Linda (@guest_156259)
August 7, 2015 02:01

Any additional bonus if we purchase the e-gift cards via the portal/pay with discover, then go back through the portal and buy something on sears.com we need anyway and pay via the e-gift cards we purchased?

TKKY
TKKY (@guest_159090)
August 12, 2015 21:18

I’m pretty sure you get the bonus twice – once for the GC and once for what you buy. I’m thinking of buying a $1500 fridge and 1) buying $1500 of e-gift cards and then 2) buying the fridge. I think I’d get the 5% from the department store quarterly bonus, the 10% from discover deals and then another 10% from discover deals again and then have that doubled. Is that 50%??

Bret
Bret (@guest_155487)
August 5, 2015 12:16

Are we supposed to always receive an email about the cashback? I made a Sears purchase last month and still never heard from them about it. And speaking of Sears, it looks like Discover removed it from their Discover Deals.

Nicholas
Nicholas (@guest_155622)
August 5, 2015 17:55

Yeah, I’ve done 6 Sears transactions over the past couple of weeks and have gotten a grand total of 0 portal tracking emails. Less than ideal.

Bret
Bret (@guest_156172)
August 6, 2015 21:49

Is the verification process the culprit? My last purchase and a current purchase both had to go through the verification process which didn’t get resolved until the many hours later when it finally processed.

Nicholas
Nicholas (@guest_152761)
July 30, 2015 16:58

Is there any way to see that your Discover portal cashback is tracking within a few hours/days of purchase or do you have to wait until your statement cuts and guess which transactions did and didn’t track? I haven’t found a running tally anywhere on the site (like TCB, BF, etc).

denny
denny (@guest_148360)
July 21, 2015 12:39

Do you know how buying on the Sears within the Discover portal is affected by the Shop your Way program. Discover Deals says restriction includes Shop your Way. Does that mean you can log into your Shop Your Way account?

Ryan
Ryan (@guest_150700)
July 26, 2015 13:24

I’m curious as well… Should I not sign on to the Shopyourway account?

I’m thinking of cancelling and reordering just because of this, I was logged in to my Shopyourway account at a Sears.com purchase.

tjp74
tjp74 (@guest_157830)
August 10, 2015 14:44

I am in the same boat… I am wondering if I should cancel my mattress purchase and recorder using guest account without ‘shop your way’.

Eric
Eric (@guest_147275)
July 19, 2015 00:29

I just went to GCW to see if the rate had fallen yet for Sears gc. It surprisingly hasn’t. I see they are selling several $300 and $500 gc. I’m guessing that most of those are from people on this blog?

anthonyjh21
anthonyjh21 (@guest_147114)
July 18, 2015 13:30

In my situation I’m not sure this is worthwhile, although I’m still debating it.

———-
Pros:
14.5 profit margin

Benefit to my bulk seller status

Cons:
Must wait a year to get the $217.50

Cross my fingers there are no clawbacks and/or tracking issues with the gift card (its against their terms after all)

Must deal with Saveya limits (even for me as a bulk seller with $6k/mo limits) because I have three Discover cards and this will cause me to have to wait until subsequent weeks for my weekly limit to open back up. It would also hinder any other sales to Saveya while I force feed Sears gc through the system as I’d have no selling limit left.

Hope there is no devaluation in the midst of completing this deal

My opportunity cost is 10%, coming from eBay gc’s purchased at Lowes and used as part of the eBay gravy train of gift card/bullion arbitrage.

———–

Is all of this really worth 4.5% to me? After writing this all out, I’m thinking the answer is no but it’s still an interesting opportunity w/ the increased portal payout.

Eric
Eric (@guest_147277)
July 19, 2015 00:32

Did you decide to do this deal? I don’t think the 10% is really an opportunity cost. Wouldn’t you instead be getting the 10% from buying the Sears gc with the Discover cards? That would make it a wash.

anthonyjh21
anthonyjh21 (@guest_147285)
July 19, 2015 00:52

It’s an opportunity cost for me, personally. I’ll explain.

I have no value with Sears. I don’t buy and resell through Sears/Kmart nor do I typically buy any products through them, as it’s a hassle and the closest one is half an hour away in a ghetto part of town. Thus the value of a Sears gift card is only as high as what the best buy rate I can get from a resale site.

Ebay on the other hand has value. I’m able to buy gift cards via ebay deals and gold/silver coins when ebay bucks are 4x-5x. It plays heavily into my MS/arbitrage strategy.

Eric
Eric (@guest_147401)
July 19, 2015 09:35

I thought you were referring to losing the 5% (doubled) cash back using your Discover card which is the same either way. Now I see you mean you could end up getting stuck with the Sears gc which would be worse than the Ebay gc which you would be able to use easily, correct?

DavidNJ
DavidNJ (@guest_147086)
July 18, 2015 11:29

My Wife has the Discoverit card so I just sent a referral from her to me. She is suppose to get a $50 referral bonus and I get $50 on my 1st spend. Will we both get another $50 in a year from now w/ the 100% bonus?