gt_croz

http://syndicator.www31.americanexpr...alone-fragment

Anyone tried this yet? It looks like the gift card doesn't actually costs any more than you put on the card. What's the catch?

What would be an easy way of redepositing the money back into your bank account?

flytoeat

$14.95 per card and $2.50 for each ATM withdrawal ($400 max) so it would cost a minimum of $19.95 to purchase a $750 card and pull your money right back out. Doesn't seem to have any cash advance fees though. Wonder if you can do this multiple times? CPM is 8/10ths of one cent per mile.

georgequinones

Why noy just charge purchases to the card , just like you would use your regular card.

That what I do with mine and I get 3125 miles for 14.95

gt_croz

I'd do that, but it would come at the cost of the miles I'd normally get for putting AMEX purchases on my Delta AMEX card.

PDX-RDM-AVL-TPA

Hmmm. This could be a good way of topping off a Delta SkyMiles Platinum Amex in order to reach $25,000 and get the 10,000 MQMs.

You can't select $750, you can only load $100 increments. if I used my Delta Amex for $800, I'd get 2,500 bonus miles plus 800 miles for the purchase, for a total of 3300 miles. However, if I used the cheque card in place of my Delta Amex (after my yearly anniverary date), I'd be "losing" those 800 miles in normal purchases. So it would probably make more sense to spend the extra $5 in ATM fees to keep the 800 miles.

Unless I need to top off my card next month before my anniversary date, this doesn't seem like it is worth the trouble (or the money). Especially since my Delta Amex is for business and I'd have to deal with the accounting - it's giving me a headache just thinking about it.

georgequinones

I dont get it , purchase the travel card with your delta skimiles
thats 800 miles plus the 2500 bonus ,

where are you losing miles ?

Points Scrounger

How does one keep track of the available balance on this card?

georgequinones

via the phone or via the online website

Helena Handbaskets

Once s/he has the card loaded with $800, s/he has two options for extracting the $800 value. One is to make two ATM cash withdrawals of $400 each, at a total cost of $5.00. S/He can avoid the $5.00 fee by simply using the card to make purchases totaling $800, but doing so means bypassing the opportunity to make those same purchases on her/his Skymiles Amex, which means "losing" the 800 Skymiles s/he'd earn by using the Skymiles Amex instead.

Helena Handbaskets

This would be an especially good deal for those targeted for the triple Skymiles offer. Just make sure you wait until Oct. 1. And I'd imagine the $14.95 goes on the Amex card, too, so you could get a total of 4960 (or 4959?) Skymiles for $19.95. That's a lower cost per Skymile than the Ambassador program last year that provided up to 31250 Skymiles for $150.

alamedaguy

I believe georgequinones's point is that you would have already gotten the 800 SkyMiles using your SkyMiles AmEx to load this gift card.

For instance, if I were going to buy an $800 television, I could pay with my SkyMiles and get 800 points. Or, I could buy this other card for $815, and get the 815 points for purchashing the card, plus the bonus of 2500.

PDX-RDM-AVL-TPA

I presume that somebody (georgequinones perhaps) has actually purchased a cheque card with a Delta SkyMiles card and received the 815 miles for the $800 loaded to the card and the fee. The cardmember agreement doesn't allow cash advances to earn miles, and the agreement leaves much open for their interpretation:
I certainly see how spending a $14.95 fee to "purchase" a cheque card would keep this sort of purchase out of the "Cash Advances" description above. However, the last sentence quoted above could presumably allow Amex/Delta to deny miles if you bought a cheque card then immediately cashed it in at an ATM.

gt_croz

I was under the assumption that this would most certainly be considered a cash transfer transaction, and therefore would not be eligible for the 800 skymiles.

Does anyone have a conclusive answer to this?

mia

I do not have a SkyMiles credit card, but have used an American Express Starwood card to purchase, and subsequently refill, a Travelers Cheque Card. The transactions are treated as purchases and Starpoints were received. I did purchase my card from a link on Delta.com and it took about four months, and several emails, to receive the Skymile bonus.

The Travellers Cheque Card (formerly called TravelFunds Cards) is not a new product, and you can find many threads discussing it in the British Airways and American Express areas of Flyertalk. Bottom line: American Express evidently monitors the useage pattern of the cards, and if it appears that the user is "churning" the account by immediately withdrawing the value at ATMs, refilling, withdrawing, etc they will decline to refill the card, and in some instances have cancelled the card and refunded the unused amount to the original credit card.

dennis

PDX-RDM-AVL-TPA

My point (and Helena Handbaskets explained it better) is that you still only get 2515 more miles than you would otherwise. In other words, you aren't getting 3315 miles for $14.95, your're getting 2500 miles for $14.95. If you want to get 3315 miles more than you would by just using your Delta Amex card for purchases, you need to spend $19.95. to get the card, then use an ATM to get the cash out.

By the way, 2515 miles for $14.95 is $0.00594 per mile and 800 miles for $5 is $0.00625/mile. Not that bad of a return, but like HH said, it would make a whole lot more sense if you did it during a double or triple mile bonus. HH's example of 4960 miles for $19.95 is $0.00402/mile.

But if you have a triple mile bonus and want to take the effort to redeposit ATM-obtained cash in $400 increments, you might as well load the card with the maximum amount of $2750. After all, you'd be getting 1200 miles for each additional $400 you "buy" then cash in for a $2.50 ATM fee, a return of $0.00208/mile. So for a total of $32.45, one could earn 10,795 bonus SkyMiles, but you'd have to go to the ATM 7 times and withdraw $400 cash and redeposit it in your bank. You'd even earn a bit of interest. This would give you a rate of $0.00301/mile, which is a pretty darn good rate. Of course I don't have a triple mile bonus available right now, and I'm not sure I would want to deal with going back and forth to the bank to deposit $400 cash from the ATM.