While Vanilla gift cards may not be the flavor of the month due to technical difficulties at Walmart in recent months, a half price activation fee is an inciting offer to pick up a few.
The Offer
Starting 8/24/14 Walgreens is running a sale on Vanilla gift cards. You will get a $5 Walgreens gift card when you purchase 2 Vanilla brand visa gift cards. As you can see in the ad the variable $500 gift cards are clearly pictured. The activation fee on the formerly popular One Vanilla gift card is 4.95. If you are getting $5 back, that’s like purchasing each gift card for $2.48. That beats out even SImon Mall’s low 2.95 fee.
The best way to maximize this deal is to use a card that has drugstore purchases as a bonus catagory. See our post about the best cards to use at the drugstore. If for example you were to use the Old Amex Blue Cash card this is how the deal would work out.
- 2×504.95=1009.90 x5%= $50.50
- $50.50-$9.90 activation fees=$40.60
- $40.60+$5.00 gift card= $45.60 profit
- Note if you resell the gift card instead of use it at Walgreens, you can get 83% of the value or $4.15 for each card. You can find the best rates at www.giftcardgranny.com
Your Mileage May Vary
YMMV, is an often used acronym among the manufactured spending community. What works at one store, or even with one cashier may not fly with another. Walgreens has a bit more variance in their gift card policies than say their competitor CVS. I have heard reports of some Walgreens not allowing gift card purchases with credit cards, or limiting thier sale to just $500 a day or transaction. Obviously anything less than $500 would be too small to make this deal worth while. You can read through this flyertalk thread or individuals experiences.
The other aspect of this deal that is store/cashier dependent is if you are able to use the Walgreens gift card to pay the activation fee on your next Vanilla gift card purchase. That would increase the convenience and profitability a good bit. One tip, try adding a small purchase like a drink to your purchase and you may get less push back to mixing in the Walgreens card in with your credit card purchase because it seems that the gift card is being used on the drink, but the balance of the card is still paying part of the fee. I’ve also found his method successful with Rite Aid’s UP rewards.
The trouble with Vanilla Cards and how to still use them
If you’ve been following the One Vanilla at Walmart threads on flyertalk, you know that Vanillas have become much more difficult to unload at Walmart in the past couple months. Difficult, does not mean impossible. There have even been some reports of Vanillas working again for some at Walmart, but those are few and far between. I personally wouldn’t recommend trying as multiple failed attempts are more likely to draw negative attention from employees. So what does work?
- Evolve
- Money orders at some local grocery stores. Policies are very regional, so the best way to locate a store that allows money orders to be purchased with debit is to simply try.
- Serve reloads at  Family Dollar. See the link for Million Mile Secrets post on the reload process there.
- Amazon Payments or Amazon Local Reader if you’ve already maxed out Amazon Payments.
Our Verdict
Worth a try, especially as there is no set limit as with a lot of other drugstore gift card sales. But this deal could quickly become too much of a hassle due to restrictive Walgreens store policies or difficulty unloading the Vanilla brand gift cards. Please leave comments about your personal experience buying gift cards at Walgreens.
It was pretty consistent for me today – 0 for 4 in Manhattan trying to pick up two.
The issue with this promotion is that the local Walgreens stores will not allow over $500 in GC value to be bought in a single transaction (and per day, I believe).
It was explained to me that an example of purchase would be as follows:
$250.00/$4.95
$250.00/$4.95
Obtain $5 Walgreens card.
Last time after the explanation, I passed on it.
In reference to the Walgreens card being used toward the next transaction GC fee, I actually once had a partial credit from a Wags card applied when I bought a Register Reward return item for something like $1. The rest of the balance on the card was applied to the fee within transaction. I have no idea exactly how to implement that, however.
I think it varies store by store in terms of $500+ loads in a single transaction/day.
Debating this one. When I first got into his hobby in May I loved OVGCs, but recently I’ve had 2 not property active and I’ve been through a rigmarole faxing copies of Ids, receipts and the cards to their investigative team. I was able buy previously at Walgreens but only one at that time.