Monday Morning Miles Talk: Why I Love Those Best Buy Gift Card Deals

Monday Morning Miles Talk is a regular series that has some smaller, more quirky ideas to kick off the work week.  These are essentially random ideas that I wanted to share with you.  Here are the previous entries.

• How To Maximize Your Flexible Spending Account
• Increase Spend For American Express Sign Up Bonuses
• Mining For Lost Rewards
• How I did Selling Those Kohl’s Personal Appliances
• Reselling Apple Airpods at the End of Their Life Cycle
• Unexpected Ways I Have Earned Points
• Can You go to Disney for Free?

Maximizing Best Buy Gift Card Sales

DDG posted an article about a Best Buy gift card sale this weekend, look at DDG working overtime :).  These sales come around 2-3 times per year.  Initially they don’t look like much but looks can be deceiving.  If you play it right you can get some free spend and maybe pocket a few dollars.

Details on the Deal

Best Buy sells their gift cards through Cashstar.  They offer a deal, on a semi regular basis, where you get $15 in Best Buy promotional gift cards when you buy $150 worth of Best Buy gift cards online.  The catch is the $15 gift cards come a few weeks later and you only have a week or two to use them.  The $15 bonus cards are promotional gift cards so you can’t resell them.

This is where most people stop caring.  If you don’t shop at Best Buy or source from there for reselling this probably isn’t interesting to you.  That is where you would be wrong.  If you are a gift card reseller this should interest you as well.

Gift Card Reselling Angle

Even though you can not resell the $15 bonus gift card you can resell the $150 gift cards.  Cardpool is currently buying Best Buy Gift cards at 89.5% according to giftcardwiki. You can get up to 3 bonus cards.  So if you bought the full boat and spent $450 on 3 gift cards you could then resell them for $402.75.  You would then get the 3 $15 bonus gift cards.  This would give you a total of $447.75 in value for your $450 in spend. Not great but not terrible.

It gets even better.  These count towards Best Buy’s rewards program. This means the purchase will earn you points and it will help you reach the next level. The higher you get the more points per dollar you earn. For simplicity I will calculate it based on being at the lowest level.  At this level you earn .5 points per dollar.  A $450 purchase would net you 225 points.  You get a $5 promo card for every 250 in points.  If you purchase gift cards in store (from an Amex offer etc.) you also earn points. I am currently at Elite Plus which earns 1.25 points per dollar and gift card purchases is a big reason why I got there.

You could use the $45 in promotional gift cards for personal use, gifts etc. Or you could use them to source products for resale. If neither of those two options interest you I have been able to use these to buy 3rd part gift cards at Best Buy stores.  This is a YMMV situation and it may depend on which store you go to.  I have been able to use my rewards certificates on 3rd party gift cards as well.

UPDATE!!!

It is no longer possible to use Best Buy gift cards towards 3rd party gift cards.

The Final Tally

Here is a look at the final numbers for the purchase.  I will assume that you use a 2% cashback card for simplicity’s sake.

You would only be 25 points away from a $5 Best Buy reward gift certificate (you could look at it as $4.50 in rewards).  If you were at the Elite Plus level you would earn enough points from this purchase for $10 in Best Buy rewards certificates.  This is a profitable deal with a 2% cash back card but I would suggest using a card with minimum spend left.  Doing that would increase your return exponentially.  Be cautious with American Express cards though.

Conclusion

This is a nice little deal that takes minimal effort.  It is a good way to get some increased spend towards minimum spend requirements.  I am able to turn a $20-25 profit with this deal based on my gift card sale relationships and my Elite Plus Best Buy status.  If you max out these deals and the Best Buy Amex offers you can get your level up in no time.

With increased spending avenues drying up over the last year or so this is another option available to you.  Not a big time gain or a long term solution but every bit helps at this point.

Disclosure: Miles to Memories has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Miles to Memories and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers.

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