Sears $20 Promo Coming Through – Much Better Than Expected!
Sears is running a generous promotion to give a free $20 Sears award card for each $100 in Sears gift card purchases. The offer is ongoing until December 22; while it wasn’t showing for a few days, it’s now showing again on the sears.com home page.
Sears: $20 Credit with $100 Gift Card Purchase + 16% Off with Portal/Discover!
The eAwards are now coming through and they are much better than expected.
- No expiration
- Coming through for multiple orders
- Coming through as one card
No Expiration
The biggest news is that the eAward cards state explicitly that they do not expire. I used the ordinary Sears gift card balance checker and it pulled up the correct balance of the eAward card. It appears that these are ordinary gift cards in every way.
That’s huge for two reasons: 1) they can be used whenever, 2) they should even be able to be sold, 3) we’ll be able to use multiple cards in one transaction (you can use up to 15 gift cards per purchase).
Update: Many are reporting that newer eAwards are coming with a January-31 expiration date.
Multiple Orders – One Card
In the original post, we noted that there is no stated limit as to how many of these eAward cards you can get. This has now been proven true and multiple separate $100 orders are triggering $20 for each one.
Not only that, all the e-cards come as one card. I did two $100 orders and I received a single $40 e-card. A reader did ten and received as single $200 e-card.
What Works?
Do e-gift cards work?
Yes
Do physical gift cards work?
I don’t have personal experience, but I assume so. Note that physical gift cards won’t trigger the 5% Discover category bonus.
Do gift card reloads work?
Unknown. Update: Reloads are working as well
I purchased two $100 Sears e-gift cards on December 8th and also did one $50 reload on December 9th. Thus far, I received a $40 eAward card for the two e-gift cards and I’ll give reloads a tentative ‘no’. It’s still possible that I’ll get another $10 eAward for the $50 reload tomorrow and I’ll definitely update this with that info or with anyone else’s experience on this.
Which Card to Use
- Use Discover, as noted above.
- Use a BofA card if you have a targeted Bank Amerideals offer for 10% off at Sears.
- Use Citi Dividend. Readers report that last year it earned 5% on Sears purchases.
- Use ATT for 3x.
Final Thoughts
Let’s hope Sears is too lazy to create a special eAward card and they’ll continue to issue ordinary gift cards as the eAward cards. Essentially, we’ll be able to buy Sears gift cards at a 16.6% discount, before even starting with the credit card and portal. Really an amazing deal!
Now the question is if we should hold out for a better portal bonus (and hope it doesn’t get pulled before the end-date) or just do this now with Ebates or Shopathome, as noted in the previous post. I’m optimistic that it will remain until the end-date.
Thanks to readers Darren, Spgbus, and Danny for contributing to this post
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each $100 GC has to be purchased in a separate transaction. Correct?
Yes
sorry couldnt thank you earlier…..busy creating 20 orders……need a script for this……:)
🙂
What about using Discover It (5%, doubled to 10%) or Dividend (5%) quarterly category for these?
Sure, we noted the Discover. Nice thought with the Dividend, but beware of how they calculate the year (you may be in 2016 already).
Do you know for sure that Sears works with Dividend?
Discover is currently at 10%… doubled to 20%?
Discover now lists both gift card purchases and redemptions as excluded…anyone know the current state of this being enforced?
Sears Discover, BuyGC Reload Sears gift card and get cash back SUCCESS 2015-10-12 Reported by Josh
Nice, maybe I’ll risk Discover if no good portal bonuses come within the next few days.
AA is at 6x right now. Double the normal rate. I split my orders between them and 6x the Chase Freedom portal is offering.
They’ve extended it to Christmas on the website.
Check your BofA Rewards or Citi Dividend cards for any 10% cashback offers instead of Discover if you’ve already maxed it out or prefer to get the credit sooner.
Great post! But here is what I am worrying about. Even if this eAward card is good to use or check as of today. Sears can easily set the gift card as 0 after Jan 31 since this is already printed in the terms. For reselling purposes, that will cause an invalid card (and other troubles).
It’s speculation on my part that this won’t happen, but it’s possible.
Got an email about they need to research my order. anyone else got that? I sent the gift to myself and i have done that in past.
Same I received another email this morning with a toll free number to call. They just verified public information and then my order was processed. 5 min total.
The Order verification number is 1-888-396-5299
Im clicking thru Shopathome at 6%. There is also a code that can be used SEARS5OFF50…which will bring the clickthru value to 11%. I’m worried that using this code this might cause me not to get the $20 eaward card from sears. Thoughts?
lol…I tried it and it wouldn’t let me do it anyway. However, now I’m getting this “Something’s gone wrong on our end and we can’t complete this request right now. You can wait a few minutes and try again. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Is it possible to consolidate many small Sears/Kmart GCs online? I have tons of <$10 GCs that I'd like to be on a single card.
Not that I know of
Aww man! This is awesome! I was looking for a way to get the last $900 for this quarter. It was so hard considering the Freedom has 10% on amazon for this quarter (and Discover has Amazon too). Now I just got that one done :). I might just buy $1,000 in Amazon gift cards since I often buy a lot of things on Amazon to resell on eBay anyways haha.
Any luck with the Sears GC reloads working to get the $20 promo ??
Seems reloads do not work
Update: reloads are working https://www.doctorofcredit.com/sears-20-promo-working-on-reloads-too/
Sears reloads worked for Citi Dividend 5% last year. Also worked with the Discover portal last year but my guess is that non-Discover purchases will be excluded now.
FM reported in his laboratory comments that Discover Deals is still paying out for Sears reloads and gift cards.
How long after ordering the $100 gc did it take to get the $20 bonus card. got my 100 3 days ago and have not received the 20
Took like a week, I think
got my ecard today and the message with it conflicts. it states the following
This award card does not expire.
IMPORTANT: Your Sears eAward Card is valid for redemption through January 31, 2016.
Gary, I also got another one today and it doesn’t say that anywhere. Can you send me a screenshot of that (and block out the gift card code)? chuck at doctorofcredit.com
My discover it statement just closed and the $800 in online Sears gift card purchases were categorized as merchandise and did not receive the 5% cash back. My in store purchases did get the 5%.
Did you buy Sears eGC or physical gc?
Did you order physical Sears gift cards or e-gift cards? The physical cards don’t work as noted in the post. Also, if the purchase was recent, it may take some time.
I bought the Sears eGC from the Sears website
What was the order date and the closing date? It takes time. I’ve had recent success, I believe.
ordered the eGC