Gift Card News: Gas GC @ Best Buy, Target GC @ Rite Aid, Third Party E-GC @ Amazon, Amex GC Code

Here’s some random gift card news in no particular order.

Gift Cards at Best Buy, Why We Care

Best Buy just recently started carrying gas and restaurant gift cards. They’ve long carried Visa gift cards (most locations, but not all), and Amazon “Kindle” gift cards which function as regular Amazon gift cards. They’ve also carried other electronics-related gift cards, like iTunes and xBox.

I just noticed in a local Best Buy that they started carrying Shell and Exxon/Mobile gift cards. They also started carrying lots of restaurant gift cards. Here’s a partial list: Starbucks, Applebee’s, Domino’s, Chili’s, and many other restaurants. I also noticed prepaid phone-refill cards from Verizon, T-Mobile etc. – not sure if that’s new or if it’s always been there.

This is important because if you have Best Buy Rewards, you can’t use them to buy Best Buy or Visa gift cards (T&C, plus I tried), but you can use them for Amazon, iTunes or any other third party gift cards. So using up those Reward dollars just got easier with the addition of gas and restaurant gift cards.

Another reason why this is important is because there’s been Amex Offers at Best Buy twice over the past year. They ran it last Nov.-Dec. and I’m hopeful they’ll run it again for the coming holiday season. We mentioned the idea of buying Visa, Amazon or Best Buy gift cards to make use of the Offer. If it comes back, we’ll have some additional options.

Speaking more in the present, I still have Best Buy Rewards from the last time Amex had a Best Buy Offer in August, and I’ve been struggling to find Amazon gift cards in Best Buy to redeem the Rewards. I stopped numerous times in a few different locations over the past month, and I couldn’t find any. I was pleasantly surprised to find the gas gift cards. I had a $100 Reward certificate, so I bought $50 Exxon and $50 Shell, applied the Reward, and my final cost was $0.

Target Gift Cards at Rite Aid

I was in Rite Aid taking care of “business”, and I noticed that Target gift cards are now being sold there. It’s a variable-load gift card, up to $500. I found this very interesting, but not particularly useful for me at the moment. They’ll probably start selling Target gift cards in other drugstores and supermarkets, but I checked in Walgreen’s and didn’t see any. Perhaps it’s a pilot program.

In the gift card sales business, the Seller (in this case Rite Aid) takes a nice chunk of the cost of the gift card. I’m sure the percentage varies, and I’m sure that bigger retailers are able to negotiate paying out less to the Seller. I had always assumed that it was between 5-10%, which would cover the payement-processing fees and leave over a little for profit. Being that gift cards take up very little space in the store, it’s worth their while to sell them and earn a few percent. But I recently saw somewhere that it’s 10-20%. That’s a hefty cost.

Amazon has long pursued a strategy of making their gift card extremely ubiquitous, and it seems like they’re doing well with it. (Of course, I don’t know any real numbers on that). Walmart and Target never sold their gift cards in other stores in order to keep their prices down.

Presumably, this is a new strategy by Target to spread themselves around, and possibly make themselves perceived more as a “gift” place, not just a “household-item” place.

Amex Gift Card Code

There’s now a code to waive the purchase fee on Amex gift cards. The code is: JTB2C. Valid until 2/15/15.

It’s been popping up in various people’s Amex log-in’s, but it should work for anyone.

Caution: This could be useful for buying small gift cards as gifts over the holidays, but don’t use it for a large purchase, since Amex stopped paying out portal points on gift cards when a promotional code is used. When ordering high-dollar gift cards, you’d do better paying the small purchase fee and going through a portal to get the cash-back from the portal.

Amazon Third-Party E-Gift Cards

Amazon has long sold third party physical gift cards, but they just started selling third-party e-gift cards as well.

 

I usually order physical gift cards, so I don’t honestly remeber that this is a new thing, but I’m taking Amazon’s word for it since they say, “NEW”. Amazon’s own e-gift cards are sent instantly, and hopefully the third-party e-gift cards that they sell will also be instant.