The Offer
- Purchase $500 or more in Hyatt giftcards and use promotional code SANTA14 and you’ll receive a bonus $50 gift card.
The Fine Print
- Limit of one bonus giftcard per order
- Valid until December 24th
- Only valid on eGiftcard purchases
Our Verdict
Doing this offer only makes sense in two circumstances, you plan to actually use the Hyatt giftcards or you plan to resell them and have access to an American Express business card. That’s because American Express business cards can be enrolled in the OPEN savings program (similar to Visa savings edge), you’ll receive an additional 5% cash back on all Hyatt purchases if you use an enrolled card. Points, Miles & Martinis is reporting he has received this on gift card purchases in the past.
Let’s look at the profitability of this deal using that method:
- Purchase $550 in eGiftcards for $500 (-$500)
- Receive $25 in cash back by using an American Express business card enrolled in the OPEN savings program (+$25). You could also get an additional 1,000 Membership Rewards points if you’d prefer, but I don’t value those at over 2.5
- Receive credit cards rewards on your $500 in purchases (at least $5)
- Sell $550 in eGiftcards for 85.5% in facevalue to Giftcards.com (+$470.25)
As you can see, you’d make a massive profit of $0.25. You can do slightly better if you sell your giftcards to Cardpool through topcashback, in which case you’d net an additional 4% in profit which means you’d net $22.25 profit, although you can only sell $2,000 of giftcards per lifetime using this method.
Usually I wouldn’t post a giftcard deal when the profit margin is so low, but there are two great American Express business card deals at the moment and both require a $10,000 spend. This might help some people reach that spend requirement quicker.
- American Express Business Gold: Up To 75,000 Membership Rewards Points Annual Fee Waived
- How To Get A 100,000 Point Offer For The AmEx Platinum Business Card
Also keep in mind that if a lot of people do this deal, the rate at which the giftcard resellers purchase the cards will decrease and you may end up loosing money. There is also no gaurantee that the OPEN savings statement credit will post as well. I’ll let you decide if that’s worth the risk or not. I think the potential for something to go wrong is higher than my risk tolerance, plus I’ve already maxed out my $2,000 at cardpool so the upside is relatively low.
If I was struggling to meet a minimum spend requirement (which you shouldn’t be, because you should only sign up if you’re confident of being able to complete it) then I’d reconsider.
Does anybody know any other ways to stack this promotion? Maybe you can shop through a portal as well, although I imagine the promo code would cancel this out.
Hat tip to Points, Miles & Martinis
