Discover announced a while back that the 10% Apple Pay promo won’t apply to gift card purchases.
My friend Deanna made numerous Apple Pay purchases immediately when the 10% promo started on September 16. She got a few very intersting emails from Discover just now which I’m posting with her permission.
- They are enforcing the gift card exclusion.
- Some gift card purchases are getting a ‘one time courtesy’ and are being honored. There doesn’t seem to be much method to which purchases are being honored and which aren’t. Apparently, the earlier purchases are being honored, possibly since they happened before the exclusion was added. Some later purchases are being given this courtesy as well. Unclear if they’ll offer everyone this courtesy on their first purchase or if it’s just for the early purchases that they are offering this.
- As of September 18, the gift card exclusion was in there. It’s not clear if it got added on the 16th, 17th, or 18th.
- One report of a purchase on the 22nd being given this one-time courtesy, but another report of a purchase on the 20th that was not given the courtesy. Apparently, it’s not just the dates that matter.
- They’ll let you send in receipts to prove that the purchase was a non-gift card purchases.
- Orensmoneysaver got an email on an odd-dollar purchase at Staples, so it’s not just the $504.95 purchases being denied. In fact, his purchase wasn’t even a gift card purchase at all. Other  people  report the same. They are just assuming high-dollar purchases are gift cards. (Yes, this may become a customer service nightmare for Discover.)
- In the first email posted above, they mention that the 10% bonus is not earned on ‘the gift card portion of your purchase’. Can you get the 10% on the activation fees? 😉
