Why You Shouldn’t Buy American Express Gift Cards Through Bigcrumbs For 2% Cashback

Update: Frequent Miler kindly pointed out that Bigcrumbs actually pays out their referral bonus two levels deep (e.g if you refer somebody who refers somebody then you get the same bonus, in this case 0.175%. This further illustrates my point that it’s worth waiting for something better).

At the moment Bigcrumbs is offering 2% cash back on American Express gift card purchases (hat tip to BigHabitat.com on Twitter, if you’re not already follow!), this is 0.5% higher than the next portal (topcashback is currently at 1.5%). Apparently this is a limited time offer and will only be available for one day.

When American Express gift cards came back onto portals, topcashback also ran a limited 24 hour “special” at 1.5%. In reality what happened is that they had an exclusive deal with AmEx for the first 24 hours and in return TCB aggressively promoted the offer on their website and with e-mail mail outs. This is the exact same thing that is happening with Bigcrumbs.

In addition Bigcrumbs offers a slightly unusual referral program, they offer a percentage of each sale to the referrer rather than a straight cash sign up bonus. For the American Express gift card deal this is 0.175%, there is very little value in Bigcrumbs running this promotion as a loss leader as the majority of people purchasing these giftcards are already intimately familiar with cash back portals. This leads me to believe that Bigcrumbs is actually receiving more than 2.175% cashback on American Express gift cards.

Given that we are moving into the holiday season, American Express will be looking to post good strong numbers for their gift card product. The easiest way to fudge those numbers is to offer a high cash back bonus through a shopping portal. Retailers know this and do this all the time, that’s why when the end of a quarter is approaching they offer crazy portal bonuses to drive their numbers up.

My recommendation? Wait it out, you’ll see better payouts than 2% (or even 2.175%) in the near future. If you’re going to make a purchase through bigcrumbs, be smart about it. Why let a blogger like me earn the 0.175% extra when you could earn it yourself? Just refer your wife/significant other/child/best friend or whoever else you trust instead and suddenly that extra 0.175% bonus goes into your pocket.

What are your thoughts? Do you think portal bonuses will increase or decrease on AmEx gift cards?

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Al
Al (@guest_33662)
October 20, 2014 08:16

I agree with your analysis…Keep in mind though that you can purchase AmEx gift cards every 2 weeks for a max of $5,000 each time… If they increase it, then you buy them again at the slightly higher payout rate…