Home Depot / Lowes Gift Cards
 

Flyertalkers,

I'm planning a renovation project for my home that will most likely go through home depot. I think it will be around 20k (hardwood floors). I don't think its possible to purchase hardwood floors through the web site. Is there a shopping portal left that will give points for home depot gift cards?

marben

Right now Discover card is offering, as a special, 10X points on purchases made through their shopping portal. Chase has its regular offer of 5X points through Ultimate Rewards.

You can purchase gift cards for Lowe's or Home Depot at a 7.2% or 8.2% discount respectively on cardpool.com. Denominations vary. There is no expiration. You can get either paper gift cards, mobile gift cards or electronic gift cards. Snail mail takes a week or more for paper. The electronic gift cards are usable only on-line and are generally available next day. Mobile gift cards are delivered almost instantaneously. There are a couple other discount card websites but cardpool seems to be best for selection as well as discount.

An additional way to save is to purchase 10% discount vouchers on ebay which are generally for Lowes but readily accepted at Home Depot under their competitor match policy. The vouchers usually expire in 1-2 months. I've purchased batches of them several times for a recently completed project. 7 10% off Lowes vouchers usually cost about $2-$5 dollars, shipping included.

EBay also offers gift cards at a discount but I've never purchased them there.

also keep in mind that you can go to safeways or other supermarket and buy the gift cards that way...some cards give you 2x points on supermarket purchases..although i'm guessing you want a major shopping portal deal..did u look at evreward yet?

The Lowes 10% off vouchers are free if you are willing to drive down to your local post office and get a couple of change of address packets.

They also come with a 10% off at best buy coupon (with several restrictions) and many other coupons.

I did a similar project about a year ago. Not quite as big as $20k worth, but as you already know hardwood floors add up fast. I was in the same situation - trying to maximize miles. Home depot looked like the one to go with. That is, until I discovered that miles are miles and dollars are the things that really matter. Long story short: I wound up buying them online from truehardwoods.com and saved nearly 50% over the exact same item that I had found at Home Depot. Certainly worth looking into if money is important to you.

After you look around first which I suggest then yes use the 10% off coupon from the post office change of address form. You can ask for a few packs when you are there. The coupon is for savings up to $500 so you can split up your purchase to maximize it. Also if you sign up for the lowes credit card (I don't think there is a sign up bonus) you will then save another 5% everyday there.

I am getting flooring from Lumber Liquidators. Was about to place order through lumberliquidators.com/Chase UR mall, but the style I wanted was out of stock at the warehouse, so I ended up having to call my local store to secure what they had in stock. Not a big loss (they were only 1 extra mile/$) and as it turns out, the store appears to have disappeared from the UR mall this week anyway!

I too would look at the benefit of cost savings vs maximizing miles. We almost bought our laminate flooring from Home Depot at 5x pts/$. The flooring we wanted would have cost us around $3500. That would have netted us around 17,500 miles/points. But instead we went through another flooring online retailer and paid around $2300 total including shipping. We got some points for the purchase but most importantly we save over $1200. So trading in 17,500 miles/points for $1200 was a no-brainer.

I went to the office about 3-4 months ago to get some of the forms, they said I could use their kiosk (computer based) and do it online, supposedly they don't have the forms anymore? YMMV.

Read the rules when purchasing gift cards from online shopping portals for cash back or points/miles to make sure that purchasing gift cards qualify. You may be better off purchasing the gift cards from a grocery store with a card that offers more points, but I don't think you'll be able to find anywhere near $20k worth of gift cards at grocery stores or at online gift card resellers.

Bigcrumbs sells home depot gift cards for a very small percentage, for either physical or emailed gift cards. If you're certain that you'll use HD, that's a good way to go.

Bigcrumbs lists HomeDepot.com as 0% cash back on gift cards.

Your home depot may take the Lowes 10% of card. Ask and see. Then you could combine the 10% off with the Home Depot Gift Cards. I picked up movers packets at a small post office last week - so if the one you go to says use the terminal - try a smaller post office that may not have a terminal.

Any updated experiences with this...? I saw that a FTer recently got US miles for a HD GC purchase... I see that the AA mall excludes HD GCs from getting miles, but I wonder if anyone slips through that exclusion...

Very true, my local Post Office said they haven't had them in months. They said you can do all your address changes online, so they won't be getting anymore. And I got about $1500 to spend next month at Home Depot. :rolleyes:

You can just fill it out and get yourself a printable one (that works online as well).

http://www.lowes.com/cd_Coupon+Registration_253641591_

I'll add to this since the thread was bumped. You also get 2x the safeway gas points on gift cards (it was 4x over the holidays). So you can rack up the gas points if you need gift cards and have a safeway gas station around. I've been buying gas $1 cheaper per 30 gallons the last few months.

I also use my Amex hilton for 6x the HH points.

You can also buy the Amex Gift cards thru BigCrumbs for the rebate and then use the gift card at some of the card discount portals like Plastic Jungle for usually a 9% discount on the card. Then find a veteran or VA card holder ( I am a disabled Veteran) to make the purchase and get another 10% off. By doing this and using my grandfathered Travelocity Amex that gives 4% back it totals 24.6% discount.

JudyJFLA

I use my AMEX Blue Cash Preferred to buy Lowe's or Home Depot gift cards at local grocery stores and get 6% cash back.

I think the post office may be trying to minimize paperwork/labor, and encourage the diy/on-line approach to address changes.
My local post office does not have any address change forms sitting out with all the other forms, but will give you one (or more) if you ask.
The on-line form doesn't work for post office boxes, so have to use paper forms.
Try another post office, another employee, or try back later.

Lowe's discount
 

The last time I ordered a Lowe's gift card through Plastic Jungle the discount was 7%. It came in the form of a mechandise credit on a plastic card.

Honestly, I don't see why you would want to go through a portal to buy Lowes or Home Depot gift cards. Most portals do not count gift card purchases (some like corporateperks.com used to but no longer) or like Bigcrumbs are for a small percentage. The 6% Amex Bluecash works well at my local Kroger's but that's normally my backup.

Instead, 7.2 or 9% off at sites like Plastic Jungle or Cardpool make the most sense. Along with the minimum 1% you'll earn using a CC to purchase, that's way better than any shopping portal. Like others have mentioned, stack a 10% off and you'll be doing great.

YMMV but you can stack and negotiate your way to great deals. E.g. on any appliance, I waited for a competitor to run a minimum 30% off sale. Take it to Lowes for a 110% pricematch. Ask them to save the price in the computer and then checkout at the main counter, where you get the cashier to use the 10% coupon (this is because they will deny pricematch + coupon at appliance dept). Pay with cardpool sourced cards and save an additional 7.2% while getting 1% back on your credit card. Yes it's a lot of work but I'm cheap :)

Also, the e-gift cards CAN be redeemed in store, the cashier just has to manually enter the card/pin. Whether they will depend on how nice you are, so be courteous!

I sent for one. I'll also check again Jlove. Thanks to both of you. :)

There is a problem with this method in that the supplies at sites like the ones you listed are often very limited. I am not sure what type of volume they would have of hardware store gift cards.

I was going to buy $1,000 worth of gift cards at Lowes through UR for the 10x points until I saw this:

"Not eligible on gift cards, gift certificates or any other similar cash equivalents. Not eligible using promo codes that aren't listed on this site."

Does anyone know a way around this? I need to buy $1,000 worth of paint but I don't want to buy the paint online. But I do want to make the purchase online through Chase Ultimate Rewards for the 10x points, which would net me 10,000 points for a $1k purchase.

If you have the ink bold card you can go to office depot or staples and buy lowes gift cards up to $200 increments. Then go through the UR mall and use those gift cards, but YOU MUST PAY FOR A PORTION OF THE PURCHASE WITH A CREDIT CARD IN ORDER TO GET THE POINTS. Frequent Miler went over this in his blog.

I don't have the Ink Bold card, but that is the next CC on my list to get.

Remember pick up the 10% Lowes coupon at the post office. But not sure if you can use it online though.

Lowe's credit card:

http://www262.americanexpress.com/bu...dit-card/29790

You can use the coupon online, but I don't know if it negates the points earned through portals.

You cannot use the coupon online. In the terms of the UR mall it says you can't use coupons or promotional codes not listed on their website. Do you have the chase freedom card? You can go into a gas station that sells gift cards and find lowes gift cards, or home improvement cards (which can be used at lowes or home depot). That's really the only other option to get the most points besides going through the UR mall, but using a lowes card to get 5% off your purchase. Never tried that though.


Please note these terms & conditions: Special increased earnings now through 7/31/2012! Not eligible on gift cards, gift certificates or any other similar cash equivalents. Not eligible using promo codes that aren't listed on this site.