Safeway/VONs $10 Coupon After $100 In Visa Gift Card Purchases

The Offer

• Purchase $100 in Visa gift cards at Safeway or VONs  & receive a $10 off $10+ voucher for future purchases. Update: you now receive a $10 off $25+ instead.
• Location finder. Once you’ve found a location near you click on “Weekly specials” then search for “Visa” to find the advertisement for this offer.

The Fine Print

• Fees are $5.95 each for $100 cards & $6.95 for $200 cards
• The coupon will not work automatically on purchases totaling $10 or more, this requires an override scan. This is particularly annoying if you’re doing a lot of these deals.
• Variable reload cards will not work
• People have had success purchasing a $200 gift card and getting two coupons to print out
• If your coupon does not print for whatever reason, you can request it here.
• Visa cards are issued by MetaBank and can have a PIN assigned
• Not all locations will accept credit card payment for gift cards
• You cannot earn fuel points on Visa gift card purchases
• $10 off $10+ coupons cannot be combined
• It may be possible to use this coupons on gift card purchases, we wouldn’t recommend doing this as it currently requires an override to work correctly.
• Current deal valid from June 18th till July 15th, 2014.

Making the most out of this deal

You’ll want to use a credit card that earns at a high rate on grocery store purchases (highest is 6% cash back), this could also be a useful way to meet minimum spend requirements. You’ll also get the best value out of buying $200 gift cards (even if only one $10 off $10 coupons prints. As you should be using a credit card that gets at least 1%+ cash back for these purchases which will negate the additional $1 fee).

• Purchase $200 gift card using a credit card that earns at a high rate on grocery store purchases, fee of $6.95 (+$12.417 on 6% cash back card)
• Receive $10 off $10 coupon (+$10)

In total you’d be making $15.467, this would jump up to $25.467 if two coupons successfully printed. Obviously this is not pure profit as you need to use the coupon for grocery purchases at Safeway/VONs might a lot of people find overpriced. This calculation also assumes you’re getting 6% cash back. If you were only getting 2% cash back then this would drop down to a profit of $7.189 per purchase ($17.189 if two coupons print).

Our Verdict

If you’re going to do this deal then please make sure you have multiple ways of unloading the Visa gift cards and never purchase so many that you’ll be in a pickle if these methods dry up. I’ll likely only do this deal if I go past a participating store, I don’t think I’ll go out of my way for this promotion. If Evolve Money didn’t have the 4 payment limit, I’d definitely be more likely to take advantage of this type of deal.

F.A.Q’s

Will these purchases post as a cash advance?

We haven’t seen any reports of purchasing these gift cards being coded as a cash advance. As always, your mileage may vary.

Will these purchases code as a grocery store?

This depends on your card and who the payment processor is (e.g Visa, American Express, MasterCard, Discover). It should post as a grocery store though. You can read more about how merchant category codes work here.