Back in the post entitled “Take Advantage of American Express gift card cashback” I talked about buying American Express branded gift cards through cashback portals to get the cards at a discount.
I had bought $6,000 worth of gift cards through BigCrumbs which was offering 4.5% cashback at the time. This netted me $270 in cashback which I should be recieving February 15th. I got my American Express gift cards in the mail rather promptly. I spent about $1,000 on the gift cards and liquidated the rest of the amount by ordering $1 coins for face value from the US mint and then depositing them at the bank.
Since I used a credit card to buy the gift cards I also netted an extra 6,000 miles. I don’t think I’ll be ordering as many gift cards now as I don’t like ordering dollar coins. I think it’s a bit annoying and embarassing to repeatedly deposit coins at the bank.
Sadly the cashback amount that various portals offer have also dropped. The highest I’ve seen are 2.0% from MoreRebates and 1.35% from BigCrumbs. From here on out I’ll probably buy only gift card in $1k or so amounts as I can actually spend it in a reasonable amount of time.
Great post! I had read about people using the US Mint program in a similar way to get miles or points. I did notice that they now add a shipping charge to any coins you order. Even so, I think you could still come out ahead depending on how big the order is.
That shipping fee is waived if you click through the shipping screen. On the final order page you’ll see it taken off.
I don’t do the “deal” anymore because I don’t like the hassle of bringing the coins to the bank for deposit.