Normally I wouldn’t bother with a post about such a small thing, but, I’ve got a bit of free time on my hands (as I glare at an avalanche of paper and a burned out shredder in my home office). So, here goes:
The 2nd Quarter Freedom bonus is primarily Restaurants, and that’s what I think most folks are looking at. But, if you’ve taken Kenny’s advice, like I have, you may have 2, 3, or more Freedoms available to you, with a bonus spend of upwards of $4,500! That’s a whole lot of Chick Fil-A!
So what do you do? Do you send the wife or girlfriend on a shopping spree at H&M? Probably not a great method of manufacturing spend there…. Or, you go to Bed Bath & Beyond. At first, I was thinking that I’d buy some stuff with the 20% off coupons that they seem to mail me every week, and resell the stuff. I still might, but this morning I was looking for the path of least resistance. That path happened to include bright yellow colored gift card packages. Yes, that’s right folks, Bed Bath & Beyond sells $200 Visa Gift Cards, at a $6.95 fee. Granted the fee sucks, its more than I’d normally pay for a $500 gift card, but, 5x kind’ve changes the math.
Things to know, based on my experience:
- Not all Bed Bath & Beyond’s have the Visa gift cards in stock. I suspect its mostly because of our fellow MSers, because they had plenty of AMEX and Mastercard gift cards. But be patient, they’ll replenish the stock, and we still have 2.5 months to go, remember, its a marathon, not a sprint!
- The manager may take your license to the back, I assume this is to take information down.
- The registers seem to stop at 3, aka $600.
- You can do multiple transactions, however, the manager that I had, limited me to $1,000 total, so 2 transactions, 5 total gift cards.
So, there you have it. If you want to get the most of your 5x, without it adding to your waistline, then give Bed Bath & Beyond a trip! But for Pete’s sake, avoid that “as seen on TV stuff”! Otherwise you might be giving your grill a facial.
Seems to be a YMMV thing, I’ve checked my local BBB in the past and they only had $100 Visa cards.
@Pfdigest – you’re not wrong. The same one that I bought a $1k at today, had nothing last week. I went to another local Bed Bath & Beyond today and they had none. But, I figure we’ll start seeing more stock in the next few weeks… It wouldn’t surprise me that they got cleaned out in the first couple weeks of the quarter.
Great minds think alike. I’ve already bought 4 of these between 2 freedoms. I was planning on not completely maxing out the quarter with this to leave a little wiggle room for restaurants that don’t take discover. Happens more than I would have thought.
@Mason – That’s a great point on Discover! Although I still don’t understand why its so hard to take them. I mean, AMEX we all know has high merchant fees, but, I didn’t think Discover did.
It is likely very hard to take Discover due to the high fixed costs and low volume. Discover simply doesn’t have the market/wallet share to make acceptance profitable.
My friend only has a Discover card and it seems like only 50% of restaurants take it here in San Diego. I’m sure even less do out in the boonies (as I found out with my Amex)!
@Eddy, We used to have a similar problem with Diner’s Club, before it got the–I think–Mastercard logo.
Same as using a Chase Ink at Staples right? Gas and time to buy chase points hmm. The $200 cards are a pain.
@Bob – Yep, you’re right, but this allows you to, shall we say, share the wealth. Agree that $200 cards are a pain, but for me, they are the reason that I keep a BlueBird, a few trips to WM to load them, and I’m done, which also mitigates the higher fee.
Say it ain’t so! 😉
I just finished unloading all those dang Vanilla VGCs from OM/OD so I am not sure I can cope with more $200s. But if they are not Vanilla and load to BB, maybe….
Will check my BB&B next time I am there!
@Elaine – I know… $200 VGCs are quite the challenge, but hopefully your BB&B has them. My opinion: Its a whole lot easier than tracking all your restaurant spend to make sure you hit $1,500!
I don’t mind $200 cards at all! When the OD/OM cards were fee-free I even bought the $50 ones. When you have Redbirds it’s a breeze to unload them…and I actually prefer Amex over Visa/MC GCs because they require less clicking when unloading to Redbird. I unloaded 40 Amex cards in less than 10 minutes – actually the manager did all the swiping, I just kept handing him one card after another. LOVE Target…so much easier than Walmart!
@Star – Agreed. Walmart is becoming more and more of a pain… But, as long as they let me buy MO’s, I’m still with them.
Star is correct, that Target is a breeze. But we never know if one day the no prepaids rule will spread to them too. Until quite recently, I had no trouble with prepaids at Fred Meyer (a Kroger affiliate) but now they claim they can’t do it because “it is against the law.” Whether true or not, that change did put a big crimp in my ability to quickly and easily unload GCs to MOs. I always keep in the back of my mind that a gig can go south at any time and $200s are always harder to unload than $500s.
@Elaine – you make a very valid point: A gig can go south at any time! We always hope it will not, but, always have to have back-up options.Sorry to hear that Meyer isn’t friendly anymore.
Can be a breeze. Or a brick wall. 🙁
@Star, you’re right that it may be a breeze for you but the moment it becomes widespread, you can bet that Target will do something about it. You’re taking time away from front line staff who should be selling and checking out real customers. I would never take 40 cards at a time and ask them to be put through.
Why do this when everyone in the MS game has an Ink card and Staples $200 VGC? This method only works if you don’t have an Ink or you’ve maxed out your Ink for the year already (unlikely for fear of Chase shutdown). I’ll just buy $1500 of CFA gift cards. =)
@Vinh – You’re right, but, I also like to maximize my Freedom whenever possible… and it would take me entirely too long to burn through $1500 CFA gift cards, if I want to maintain my figure! 😛
so the VGCs & MCGCs at both, BBB & OD, can we unloaded at WM?
they have to be usbank or metabank?
thanks
@Gene – I haven’t made it to WM yet with them, but I don’t anticipate a problem, if I did run into a problem, I’d just use them to load my RedBird at Target. I personally avoid the MCGCs, just because they’re more of a pain to unload at Walmart.
The VGCs I got at OM/OD were all Vanillas which are hard to unload at WM. Check your packaging and if it says Vanilla, google to get some info on how best to unload them. That’s why I was buying MOs….
Where can you buy $500 gc with a lower fee than that?
@Eric – Simon’s are $3.95 per $500 (unless you can sweet talk them to let you get 25+ cards).
The MCGCs worked fine for me at the Money Center. Just be sure to retrieve the pin buried in the packaging. It’s not the last four digits like VGCs.
@Audrey – Good Point on the PIN!