Until today, it was possible to get the 5% REDcard discount on merchandise purchases on target.com when paying with a Target gift card – so long as the REDcard is saved in your Target online account. That’s no longer working.
The trick here was to buy discounted Target gift cards with a credit card, and then get 5% additional off. As an example, you might have bought Target gift cards at 10% off + used a 2% credit card to buy them + got 5% additional off for having the REDcard saved in your online account. This deal was especially huge to resellers who buy a lot from target.com.
As of today, the system prorates the 5%. So if you pay totally with Target gift cards you don’t get a REDcard discount at all. If you pay $1998 out of $2000 with a gift card, you’ll only get $.10 off, 5% of the $2 paid with the REDcard. This is the same as the in-store system which prorates the 5% discount based on how much is paid with the REDcard.
Some people had this work even when the gift card covered the entire cost. At other times some people had to leave over a few cents to pay with the REDcard in order to get it to work. Either way it was a huge deal which is now totally dead.
Now for the war stories…
For those of us who remember, around a year ago it was possible to buy gift cards on target.com using a gift card and still get the 5% discount. That died when Target.com began cancelling orders of gift cards purchased with gift cards.
In the heyday, Target.com sold eBay gift cards. I must have run $100k+ Target gift cards through target.com buying eBay gift cards. And I have no doubt there are others who did $1M+.
Back in the real good times, the Target mobile app made consolidating Target gift cards as easy as one could hope for. So even small denom cards at a good discount were fair game. I had a few Target gift cards saved permanently in my target.com account, and I’d keep reloading them with whatever discounted gift cards I found through the mobile app.
The good times. RIP.
Hat tip to Milestomemories and Slickdeals
View Comments (20)
How did the eBay loop work? I missed that one or don't understand what you mean. My process was to go to eBates to get to Raise...1% there. Would buy Target at Raise for 6-10% off, while charging it to my cc for 2% credit... log into Target with RedCard for 5% off and buy Disney... then deposit to Disney Vacation Savings Account for 2%. In the end that would total around 17-20% off.
The loop was to buy eBay gift cards on target.com and then buy Target gift cards on eBay.
I miss the eBay loop days... eBay bucks as well.
Man, you ain't kidding
This devaluates the usual Target discounts like buy 2 package of X, get a $5/$10/.. gift card as well.. :(
I don't trust Target anymore ever since they invalidated gift cards that were purchased with other gift cards (and basically stole that money from some consumers)... I think that was last month. Never touching Target gift cards again. If they had the audacity to do that, who knows what other horrible things they will do.
100% agree. their arrogance and extreme disrespect for customers will only cost them in the long run. my family and i are completely done with target after that fiasco.
100K? So what, you bought 1000 ebay giftcards? I don't know what's wrong with you people. No wonder good things die out so quickly.
100K is peanuts.
Bitter bird chirping because they didn't get to share in this like the rest of us did.
I was well aware of the deal, just wasn't a douche about it. Don' feel like you did anything great, cause you didn't.
That lay lasted a very long time.
Thanks for telling us about this when we have no use for it
Unlike other bloggers Doc actually has integrity in addition to knowledge. You can bet if bowtie got his hands on this information it would have been killed a year ago.
In the old days it was possible to get 5% off on GC with DEAD redbird on account lol.
Wow, that's really sad. Glad I got one last Disney World trip in back in November using this trick.
Plenty of people have SOs who can't buy nary a flip flop due to being banned from targets site
Haha yeah I'm one of those people. Wife wasn't too happy that we can't buy anything from target.com. Fortunately we still have Amazon, B&M target, walmart etc. Still sucks at times though, especially when there's baby/diaper deals. Ironically target is probably losing more money by banning me even though there's nothing left to be profited from.
On a side note, does anyone know how, if even possible, how to circumvent being banned and still place online orders? Wife and I can't order. I've used different IP address and computers. Is it linked to the home address?
Try changing the name (maybe not possible for cc), address slightly (add an a etc.), and don't use any cc's you ever used with them. Try prepaid card where you can alter name/address fully and have it all line up and make sure you haven't done any attempted orders on the computer and make sure you've "cleaned" the computer of all cookies. no idea if that will work, just a suggestion
The Target REDCard: hands down the debit card I extracted the most value from (and probably ever will?)