Dissecting my Discover Statement – Update on Discover Q4; Google Wallet, Evolve, Gyft, Paypal, eBay Gift Cards, J Crew

Discover Q4

A few weeks ago we reported Bad News on Discover Q4. Turns out it’s not all that bad. In fact it’s pretty good.

We reported on GiftCardMall and Junkcard not triggering the Q4 5% category bonus for online purchases. Just yesterday, travelwithgrant.com reported that the cash-back finally did post for GiftCardMall, much later than expected.

In this statement, I earned the full 5% for Google Wallet top-up, eBay e-gift card via Paypal Digital Gifts, and a gift card purchased from Gyft.

As for Junkcard, it seems to be the odd-man-out, and maybe has to do with how they code themselves.

My Statement

Here’s what my Discover statement (Nov. 5 – Dec. 4) looks like:

 

 

And here’s what my cash-back summary looks like:

My Charges

Here’s a list of the charges and cash-back:

• $69 Paypal. This was when I purchased a $100 eBay gift card for $94. I paid $25 with a physical eBay gift card that I had, and charged the remaining $69 to Discover. It did earn 5% cash-back. Gift cards seem to trigger the 5% without a problem.
• Two $994 payments on Evolve. I got $5 off each of those $999 payments, for a total Discover charge of $994. They did earn 1%, but did not earn 5%.
• The next charge is $503.95 at Walgreens. I earned the full 5% cash-back at Walgreens, up to $1,000. I spent $504.95 last month, and $503.95 this month. I got the full $50 cash-back (5% of $1000 = $50) on this months statement, since Discover is slow on posting.
• I made a $20.58 top-up to my Google Wallet account, which I subsequently withdrew from the ATM. I wanted to see if it would earn 5%. It did. I assume sending money to someone via Google Wallet (for a 2.9% fee) would also earn 5%.
• I purchased two $100 Gap e-gift cards for $80 on eBay. I paid part with an eBay gift card and the remaining $102.58 with my Discover card. It earned 5%.
• I purchased three $50 eBay gift cards for $45 each, $135 total. I received 5% cash-back for the purchase.
• I bought a $15 Amazon gift card for $10 on Gyft. I received 5% cash-back from Discover for that.
• I bought a $100 eBay gift card for $90. I received 5% for that.

You’ll also see in the above cash-back summary $50 of cash-back that I received from DiscoverDeals (a.k.a. ShopDiscover). That was from purchasing two $250 gift cards at J Crew. I hope to still make a couple more J Crew orders with Amex to get the 10% cash-back from Discover.

Final Word

It’s hard to tell from the cash-back statement exactly what did or didn’t earn 5%, because it takes them time to post the cash-back, and it often only posts on the next statement. I chatted with Discover, and they confirmed that all of my charges earned 5%, besides for Evolve. As for Evolve, you can see on my cash-back summary “Everywhere Else $20.26”, which is mostly coming from the Evolve payments.

All together, I had a balance of $239 in my Discover account. So what did I do with it? Usually, I’d just redeem it for 1¢-per-point. There’s another way of getting a value of more than 1¢-per-point by redeeming for gift cards. Some gift cards are given at a discount. For example, a $25 Staples gift card costs just 2,000 point.

I’m not planning on making any Staples purchases soon, but I redeemed $220 cash-back for $275 in Staples gift cards. I’ll resell them for at least $236.50. I usually wouldn’t bother to get the slight bump in value, unless I would use the gift card itself, but in this case I was redeeming a nice chunk in one shot, so it was worth a few minutes of my time to get another $15-or-so in value from the redemption.