skynerd

As an alternative to AmEx gift cards, I ordered a $500 Visa gift card from giftcards.com with my Citi AA personal Visa a couple of days ago. The transaction apparently posted as a purchase, not a cash advance. The bigcrumbs 2.4% rebate ($12) posted a day later. After the $4.95 activation fee and $0.44 shipping, it nets to a 1.3%+ rebate.

I have not yet received the gift card, but I plan to edit this message to confirm when I receive and successfully use it. The cash advance limit on the card was above the amount of the order (see my post #232 on this thread for issues with changing the cash advance limits on these cards).

Edit 12/25/2010: Thanks to Marathon Man for message #312 describing his giftcards.com successful order and giftcards.com's rejection of an AmEx gift card as payment.

Edit 12/27/2010: Ordering another $500 giftcards.com Visa, this time with Citi AA AmEx, similarly posted as an ordinary purchase (not a cash advance). In other news, I received my first giftcards.com Visa about a week after I ordered. Be warned that these cards cannot be used for "money gram services such as Western Union, PayPal accounts, adult websites, and for repeating bill payments."

Edit 12/27/2010: bigcrumbs has extended their 2.4% giftcards.com rebate to MasterCard. http://www.bigcrumbs.com/crumbs/reta...ils.do?id=1297 and http://www.fatwallet.com/coupons-cash-back/GiftCards/ often list $1.50/card discount codes for giftcards.com MasterCards, thereby raising the effective rebate on a $500 MC gift card with US mail shipping to just over 1.6%, if I have my math right. Currently, fatwallet lists coupon code MCNEWYEARS as valid for this until until 12/31/2010.

Edit 12/28/2010: Each time you use a new credit card, giftcards.com quizzes you on some details of your personal information that you might not be able to recall within their 5 minute time limit. Failure results in your being asked to wait 10 days. Both times I took that quiz, I was asked where my social security number was issued. According to web pages list http://www.ssa.gov/employer/stateweb.htm , this can be determined from its first three digits, so be sure to have the answer to that question before you order with a new credit card. . Thanks to freakflyer for pointing this out in his message #369 at http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/15540384-post369.html .

Edit 12/29/2010: I successfully used MCNEWYEARS discount code for giftcards.com MasterCard purchases via bigcrumbs.com and my rebate has posted (code expires 12/31/2010 11:59pm).

Edit 12/29/2010: AmEx apparently accepted a $500 giftcards.com Visa gift card as payment for their own gift card. Both transactions were through bigcrumbs, although the AmEx transaction has not yet credited on BC, and the AmEx card has not yet arrived. This test purchase did not use the $99/year AmEx premium ("free") shipping program, so it will cost slightly more than the rebate, even with a discounted shipping discount code, but there is no indication that there should be a problem using the free ship program.

Edit 1/1/2011: Purchase limits: Over two weeks, I have ordered $8k$7k+ with one user ID and all four combinations of two credit cards and two addresses. Each order was approved within 24 hours.

Edit 1/1/2011: Shipping: A representative who I spoke to when one of my approvals was misdirected by a spam filter said something to me that may indicate that orders that use the $0.44 shipping method might be processed only each weekend. It is worth noting that the $6.75 "confirmed" mail shipping options is charged per order, not per card (unlike the $0.44 shipping), and is described as having a shorter estimated ship time.

Edit 1/1/2011: Better rebate?: Extrarebates.com appears to offer 3% on giftcards.com. If this works for MasterCard and Visa gift cards, it should net 1.7%+ on a $500 card with $.044 shipping (or 2%+ if the $1.50 per card MasterCard coupons returns).

Edit 1/2/2011: Oops. I've only ordered $7k+ through giftcards.com, not $8k+.

Edit 1/3/2011: extrarebates.com reduced their giftcards.com rebate from 3% to 2.5%. In comparison, giftcards.com pays 2.4% + 0.3% referral. So, if you were referred to bigcrumbs.com by a loved one, you might consider that a better deal.

Edit 1/5/2011: The AmEx GC bought with a giftcards.com Visa GC arrived and worked for a variety of online orders, with no need to call AmEx customer service.

Edit 1/13/2011: AmEx GC's have been successfully ordered with giftcards.com MasterCard GC's (not just giftcards.com Visa GC's). Also, extrarebates posted the rebate from a giftcards.com order within two days.

Edit 1/14/2011: giftcards.com MasterCard was detected as a gift card on a recent retailer receipt that I received, which showed the remaining balance. So, the mint can probably detect it too.

Edit 1/18/2011: Even though AmEx gift cards are reported not working, I have placed orders with the mint with both Visa and MasterCard giftcards.com cards since then. One order was for a gift certificate, and the other was coins using the gift certificate plus the other gift card. The coins have not yet shipped, as I just placed the order, but the authorization hit my gift card already (which apparently does not happen with AmEx gift cards). By the way, customer service at the mint says that e-gift certificates are not working online right now, so you may have to call in any order that uses an e-gift certificate for now.

Edit 1/19/2011: My mint order using giftcards.com gift Visa and MasterCard gift cards has entered the "in process" state, where I am no longer offered the ability to cancel it. So far, so good.

Edit 1/21/2011: My mint order using giftcards.com cards now has a tracking number, and FedEx claims to have received it from the shipper.

Edit 1/23/2011: Thanks to iloveipods in message 993 and Unitedsux in message 1005 for reporting that their 3.6% from mydealsandcoupons for giftcards.com purchases posted. I would be interested in hearing reports of whether mydealsandcoupons pays on time.

Edit 1/23/2011: Do not check your balance on a giftcards.com card more than three times in one day. If you do, your card will be deactivated until you call customer service, after which you will also have to reactivate it using your security code. I did this once, and my card still was not fully reactivated (my next attempt to use it was declined), so I had to do a second round of this process before the card was usable again.

Edit 1/25/2011: Thanks to iloveipods for pointing out in message #1018 that the 3.6% rebate from MyDealsAndCoupons for giftcards.com apparently only applies to Visa, not necessarily MasterCard.

The rest of this message is editorial anticipating possible objections to this posting, in the hopes of eliminating an iteration of meta-discussion. If you don't hate me for posting the above information, you can safely stop reading now and you will not miss any useful technical information.

I am aware that dweick in message #240 claims some of the information above is "not of value", but I think that is erroneous, as I think people who have not already found cards that work will find this sort of information a big time saver. The information might be useless to a veteran, but I think it is potentially useful to a lot of other FlyerTalkers and it is not easily found elsewhere. I know I have spent a lot of time looking for reports like this.

To anyone concerned that separate postings about thousands of credit cards will flood the thread, I will attempt to edit this posting in place rather than post new messages as I get new information about Citi AA + gift cards. If people start making a lot of success story postings, then I will make a new thread for it if nobody beats me to it.

The Citi AA cards are members of a relatively small number of FlyerTalk favorites for earning travel-related rewards, and it is the use of these reward cards that makes the gift card threads relevant to FlyerTalk (compare, for example, a generic discussion of how to reduce your taxes). Citi AA information is especially relevant right now with many FlyerTalkers having $10k Citi AA spend requirements to optimize. Bear in mind that this message is in response to a request for information about this specific credit card. Also, I asked Astrophsx (who's thread this is) and he was OK with me posting this success report.

To anyone having other reasons to oppose sharing success information about which cards work, please see my message #236 in this thread, and please also consider that gift card issuers will most likely see these promotions as worth doing if they attract a lot of new users rather than just a small cabal of professionals. So, it may be in your enlightened self-interest to make things easier for people who value their time and therefore perhaps might not over-use as much, thereby making your over-use more likely to be tolerated.