I recently conducted a J Crew experiment, and the results are just in.
J Crew Offer
- Spend $125 at J Crew of jcrew.com and receive a $25 statement credit.
Signup is available via Twitter by tweeting #AmexJCrew from a connected Twitter account.
Offer valid until 12/24/2014.
Moneymaker
A physical J Crew gift card purchased at jcrew.com will trigger the statement credit. (I’m unsure about an e-gift card.)
If you buy $125 J Crew gift card at jcrew.com, you’ll receive a $25 statement credit. If you sell the gift card to a reseller, you’d break-even, or possibly  profit slightly. They’re offering at least 80% of the face-value.
Now let’s get to portal…. Some merchants will payout portal points for gift card purchases and some won’t.
FM Labratory reports that ShopDiscover pays out on J Crew gift card orders. Currently, ShopDiscover is offering 10% cash-back at J Crew.
I can now confirm first-hand that ShopDiscover will payout on gift card purchases. I made a purchase myself last week, and just now I got the confirmation email that I’ll be receiving 10% cash-back.
It still may not be worth the hassle, since portals don’t always track properly. Â Additionally, you can’t file a missing-cashback-claim, since you didn’t pay with your Discover card, and since Discover officially says that gift cards won’t earn cash-back.
Double Pay
But wait! It gets better….
When I went to order a gift card on jcrew.com last week, I added $125 gift card to my cart, and went to checkout. At checkout, the system asked me if I want to pay with one credit card, or if I want to split it between two credit cards.
Whoa, what was that? I can split the charge between two credit cards?
This is very rare, but J Crew allows split-tender for online transactions. The split can only be between two credit cards, not more than two.
I immediately emptied my cart, and added a $250 gift card, double the $125 gift card I had added initially. Then I split the charge, and put $125 on one Amex card, and $125 on another Amex card. Immediately after placing the order, I received two “Congrats” emails from Amex, thanking me for using my synced cards.
One of the things I always calculate when doing gift-card-churns, besides for the actual profitability, is the amount of effort involved. In this case, we’re almost halving the effort involved in the churn by using two Amex cards in one shot.
At the end of the day, I’ll earn the 10% cash-back or $25 for this single order, plus 250 credit card points. That definitely adds to the equation to make it worthwhile.
There’s still the chance of the portal not posting properly, but being that there’s no possible loss, and there’s a probable gain of at least $25 per order, I think I’ll be making some more J Crew orders soon….
