Update 1/24/24: Deal is back through 1/30/24 (ht Roy and Terry)
The Offer
- H-E-B grocery chain is offering a free $10 H-E-B gift card with coupon when you buy $50 Vanilla Visa gift card. Must clip coupon first.
The Fine Print
- Expires 2/9/21
- Limit 1 per phone number with digital coupon
- In-store only
Our Verdict
We’ve seen HEB offer this kind of deal many times before. In the past, buying a variable-load card, e.g. a $500 card, worked for some, but not for others; hopefully the HEB experts will let us know if it works this time. Yet others are told they can’t use a credit card at all, only debit.
Even buying $50 Visa card could make sense on its own since the $10 covers more than the activation fee, plus you get a grocery multiplier. Use a card that earns a bonus at the grocery.
Update History:
- Update 1/25/23: Available again through 1/31/23 (ht another Jeff); Update 11/28/22: Available again.
i’m new to this, but I just tried this at my local H-E-B, and it looks like you still get charged an activation fee of $ 5.95… is that expected?
Aaaaand I’m dumb.
If the card is rejected,its rejected by vanilla or the vendor?
Only way to find out is by calling at least one of them and inquire about it
How to register this vanilla card for online payments?i dont see any place to register the billing adress
Had a lot of trouble getting the cashier to honor this. Coupon didn’t work when scanned. Ended up having to get manager to give a $10 discount on the order.
First you go to HEB.com to select your Coupons. you purchase a HEB gift card for $10 along with the Vanilla gift card. On the POS terminal you tap on the DigiDeal then enter your cell phone number and pin. You will see $10 removed from your bill. Then make final payment with your credit card. I did not see paper coupons at my HEB.
its not paper because its limit one and one per account. alternatively, the app has a scannable barcode that applies coupons
Yes – a digital coupon. No paper coupons or we could MS spend this deal. I believe in the past HEB had unlimited use on certain offers which had to cost them.
No, what happened to the person you’re replying to has already happened to me and it’s only the store’s fault. Basically HEBs POS system is very unreliable when it comes to these coupons, sometimes you add the coupon to your account and the register still won’t honor the discount at the time you’re paying (after scanning your accounts barcode obviously), even after meeting all the criteria for the offer.
At that point the cashier will either scan a different paper coupon and manually apply the discount or call the supervisor in turn if the discount is more than a low amount
ah classic karen. always making a square peg fit into her round hole
Anyone having issues with Vanilla visa gift card? The insurance bill payment keep getting canceled with Vanilla Visa giftcard. So I tried with MC giftcard, no problem. Last time I purchased Vanilla GC was at least 2 years ago (from HEB too) and didn’t have any problem.
this shit vanilla keeps on rejecting for me.How do we register the billing address for this physical gc?
Vanilla GC still not working. The MC gift card from office depot worked w/o problem
It works fine. If not its cashier error or the coupon hasn’t been clipped in the app.
You must have posted on wrong question.
My insurance payment was one of the few places where the Vanilla card was accepted. I tried to use one to pay my accountant and it was rejected. You need to call the customer service number and they will manually ok the vendor.
As an aside, my county’s real estate tax processor (Certified Payments) recognizes the Vanilla card as a debit card and charges 1%. The other gift cards (Staples/OD) got recognized as credit cards and was charged the higher 2.15% fee
Thanks. My real estate tax is not due for a while so I went to ACI payment for the federal tax payment 2023 and got declined again. Then, I went to payusatax and it finally worked. The fee is fixed at $2.14. So it worked out great in the end. I am afraid there will be even more restrictions with vanilla cards in the future. I won’t bother with it again.
$500 Vanilla Visa GC did trigger the $10 HEB gift card.
why would you want to buy 500$ visa card to just get 10$ heb bonus?
because generally these arent profitable with 5% cashback cards due to the fee; the coupon soaks the fee (and 3 bucks extra via the GC) and any CC multiplier of at least 5% is profit. at that point you sacrifice the extra dollar for a higher amount gift card for 5% back on this cash equivalent (or 6% with amex or 9% CFF first year)
Manufactured Spending. I only buy GCs with a profit and use them organically like paying bills. But MSer’s buy GCs to earn points and liquidate them.
Buy with a card that earns a high grocery multiplier like Freedom this quarter with no fee thanks to $10 heb bonus (provided you shop at heb and can use the $10 heb gift card).
Anyone tried with $500 Vanilla gift card to see if it will trigger the offer? Thanks!
I did and it worked
Thanks!
i tried 500 at my store but the system would just deny it before i even got to the coupon.
Sorry to hear that? Do you mean at the self checkout kiosk? I know ours is limited to $200 and I think doesn’t allow gift cards…
i specifically tried a cashier this time; i even see their screens say denied when trying 500. did you have the silver package ones or the white package ones. they have different fees (i doubt that matters) but it might have something to do with it. i used the white one for a 50 first time around and then used a silver one for 200 the second time around (since my experience was also that 200 would deny it)
Mine was white. Make sure they enter 50000 for the amount. Fee is $6.95.
fun story; youll notice some cards have half the barcode on the packaging and the other half on the physical card (theft deterrent?) and these didnt work. tried a 5.95 fee variable with a full barcode and it worked for 500 (obscure one with few remaining but it worked)
Interesting. Thanks for DP and glad you found one with a lower fee
YES – $500 Vanilla GC triggered the $10 HEB GC.
Thanks!
Not as good as the $20 gift card for $100 but decent.
Coupon not found.
https://www.heb.com/digital-coupon/coupon-detail/50020668