In case you didn’t already know, Toys R Us are closing all of their stores. You will be able to use your Toys R Us gift cards for the next 30 days (until April 13th). Reports are coming in that Toys R us registers have been updated and you can no longer purchase ANY gift cards from Toys R Us. This includes gift of college gift cards and other third party gift cards and is in effect regardless of what payment method is used. Gift cards are also being taken off shelves as well.
Toys R Us is currently the only store that sells Gift of College gift cards, Best Buy was supposed to be added as a partner but the timeline for that was well over a year ago. When contacted Gift of College provided the following response (via @koyao):
Obviously they aren’t aware of these new changes at Toys R Us just yet. If anybody has purchased gift cards from Toys R us within the last hour, then please share your datapoints and locations in the comments below. Fingers crossed this means that GoC will either launch in another retail store or will offer us fee free gift cards online with a category bonus. Read Frequent Miler’s gift of college post if you need a primer.
Looks like GoC added a new option on their own website to fund your account with a credit card directly, up to $500. Instead of being limited to “gift cards” with a max value of $200.
It’ll show up after you log into your account. I’m not sure of the fees though, it doesn’t tell you the fees on the checkout screen. There is a “submit” button after you enter all your credit card info, and I don’t want to submit an order to find out what the fees are after the fact.
That’s been there for at least a little while, I did a $500 payment last month when I couldn’t get to a Toys R Us in time. There’s a 3% fee, so a $500 payment was $515 total.
I’m more nervous about whether or not Amex will count that towards my MSR should eyes hit my account, I did it to put spend on my Aspire.
Ah ok, thank you. Well if the fee is 3%, then isn’t it still better to buy the gift cards from the site and then redeem them to your account rather than directly loading your account?
You can still buy $300 gift cards online for a fee of $5.95 which comes out to about 2% fee.
It’s not significantly better than the direct loading but still better.
This sucks, I was planning to use my 2X Chase Freedom’s to buy 6 GoC cards next quarter via PayPal 🙁
As much as this sucks for the GoC people, I kind of like that they are not selling their own gift cards anymore. They could easily keep selling them and screw people out of redemption in a week or two. It shows some integrity on their part.
I bought the GCs two days ago. At that time, the cashier said they would not take credit card. But she changed mind later. I deposited the GCs right away.
Anyone check out babies r us?
I checked it out last night. All GCs were gone
what about babies r us?
No idea
Went tonight, too late, no more gift cards anywhere in store.
I was in the store this morning, trying to buy GoC. I found one, asked if there were more anywhere. Cashier said store was told to pull them off the shelf this morning. I only saw TRU gift cards near the registers. Everything else gone.
Ugh!!! I have tuition payments to make.
Here too. Hoping this will put some incentive for Gift of College to move over to BestBuy. Fingers crossed for better option than toys r us.
Is that why Giftcardzen removed all of their 270k Toys R Us inventory today?
Doubtful. Not sure what they’re doing with it.
Don’t think so, this is to do with purchasing new gift cards. Nothing to do with redeeming (we covered redeeming earlier today).
No. I wonder if someone is betting on Toysrus being required to redeem gift cards for cash.