If you’re purchasing large amounts of gift cards online, you’re not going to like this: Starting December 1, Giftcards.com, GiftcardMall, and Cardpool will all be imposing a $30,000 monthly limit on cash back portal payouts. That’s bad news, considering in the past you could earn 1% cash back on up to $5,000 worth of Visa gift cards per day.
On the positive side, shopping portals like Yazing are increasing cash back rates on MasterCard gift cards to 1.25%! I’ve never purchased MasterCard gift cards from giftcards.com before, so I have no idea which ones are issued by Metabank. [UPDATE: As of July 2018, the limit has increased to $60,000 per month]
While this sounds like horrible news, it’s actually not that bad. For starters, most people weren’t ordering $150,000 worth of gift cards per month anyway. The $30,000 limit is likely sufficient for most card churners. It means you can still produce $360,000 worth of discounted manufactured spending per year.
Who really needs more miles than that? Ok, I do. But I can order gift cards using family members’ accounts. I’ve been ordering gift cards for them using their credit card and giftcards.com account anyway. This just means I have to do that more frequently if I want to increase my MS. Which, for the time being, I don’t.
Another reason this new purchase limit from giftcards.com isn’t as bad as it may seem? It’s not the only gift card churning resource. At 1% cash back, about $2,500 worth of manufactured spending costs $17.20. Or $6.88 per $1,000. That’s less than the $8.60 you’ll pay liquidating mall Visa gift cards – not a massive difference. It’s higher than the $6.43 you’ll pay to earn 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points with the Chase Ink Plus card at Staples.
The $30,000 limit on cash back eligible purchases from giftcards.com is definitely bad news, but it’s nothing we can’t work around. We’ll still be able to earn hundreds of thousands of miles every year through gift card churning.
More importantly, it’s not the only Visa gift card resource. So if 360,000 miles a year isn’t enough, then you still have other options. Ideally, you shouldn’t be channeling all of your MS towards one gift card merchant anyway.
How does this $30,000 purchase limit on giftcards.com orders affect your manufactured spending plans?
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Wow! I can’t find a WM friendly (or grocery chain) to even get going! Used to be easier but not so much anymore. Been using TPM for some easy (but $100 here and there) spending .. wish I could remotely do 30k a month. Heck, half of that! Marry me?
Lol!
To clarify, it’s a 30k limit on portal CB, not a purchase limit. If someone was desperate for some spend without the portal payouts, they could still do it.
Where is that info coming from? It’s still not ideal, but I guess for some people who are desperate to generate extra spend it could work out.
Just reading the T&C on sites like yazing and simplybestcoupons. Have you seen different language elsewhere?
The T&C’s won’t be updated until December 1, when the change is implemented. I got my information from a cash back portal rep.
They already are updated on the sites I mentioned. Others like, TCB, wait until the change is effective to update.
True.
From what I understood, we can still buy as much as we want from GCcom/GCM although it is portals like TCB, yazing, and others that will limit our earnings up to $30K. I don’t think it’s per portal but it applies to orders on GCM/GCcom per account. If they base it on one’s billing address, it’ll be difficult to go around their terms because names/address must match on CCs and orders. I’ll wait for more DPs online if others can get away with using multiple accounts using the same billing address and still get their portal CBs beyond $30K.
I prefer GCM since the fees on GCcom are $1 higher per card and shipping of $7.20 with no free shipping option for orders with lesser amounts. With GCM, orders below $2000 have free shipping + 5.95 fees on each card; for orders >$2K, lowest shipping is $10.95 so it is best to maximize orders up to max limit of $15000 per month as long as one’s credit line allows it.
Many people are having issues with both sites since both sites ban customers with no rhyme or reason; we just have to try our luck each time and hope our orders go through. Many times, orders go through and then we get emails that they have been cancelled without any explanation.
I haven’t gotten an order approved with GCM in like three years. For whatever reason I can’t even get past the submission step. Sometimes they run $0 fee promos, which can be lucrative.
After being blacklisted by GCM for several years, I set out to “rehabilitate” myself. Over several months, I bought a few store GC’s ($50-100), and used them for normal RS, draining them slowly and letting them sit with a balance for long periods. I don’t know if it was cause or coincidence, but after about 5 months of this I was once again able to order VGC’s.
Nice! After about five years I still haven’t had luck with GCM.
I just do not have the time to do quite that much. However, there are work arounds. Get several email addresses and setup multiple accounts. GC.com limits me to $2500 per day and I just log in twice, through yazing or topcashback always.
The limit is in fact two purchases of up to $2,500 per person, per day.
I’ve had orders past my initial $2499 order get canceled if they’re on the same day. I’ve relegated myself to $2500 per day on my account. This is a big part of my MS-from-home strategy and I would rather not mess it up.
Through gift cards.com? I always place two per day and rarely have an issue with orders going through. GCM on the other hand hasn’t approved an order in like 3+ years.
I’ve only been buying $2500 monthly on each of my SPG personal and SPG business cards and about $2000 monthly on my Chase Business Ink Cash card. Could you share which cards/issuers we can use for GC purchase without the risk shut down ? I’ve heard cycling through the limit will get you shut down.
I milked the Arrival when I still had it – Barclay didn’t seem to care about card cycling. WM Bill Pay, however, got me shut down. Discover doesn’t seem to care either. Bank of America (i.e. Alaska card) is also pretty MS friendly. I do use Chase and Amex (SPG) cards at GC.com, but I never cycle my credit limit with those banks.
The time and economics of MSing both Alaska card and Arrival+ card doesn’t seem to be worth it. The max points per $ seems to be 2 points per $1 spend with the Alaska points being valued at $0.019 and Arrival+ at $0.01. Can you explain why it could be time well spent?
For my MS, I use both my SPG cards and my Chase Ink Cash Plus card (Office Max only). Is there a % of the card limit to use for MS that would be ‘safe’ threshold to prevent any shut down? I never MS during the first 3 months of any card.
Considering I can buy and liquidate about $10,000 worth of gc’s in less than an hour (I used to do $20k with WM Bill Pay), the time isn’t really an issue for me. I use a variety of credit cards to keep my spending patterns normal. So I do use Ink and SPG, but Alaska is a good backup. For starters, Bofa is pretty MS friendly. I’ve cycled credit lines before (I don’t make that a habit – just when it’s necessary) and haven’t gotten shut down. Also, I can only put so much spend on the SPG card (which is a more efficient MS tool for Alaska miles). So I use the Alaska card to supplement the MS I do with the SPG card. Arrival was great for the fact that miles posted instantly and Barclay didn’t care how often I cycled my credit line…until I used WM Bill Pay.
I’m so jealous of you and your user-friendly Walmarts.
It took many years of searching and a lot of hard work to make it MS-friendly.
Yup, been there. Then, sadly, they changed managers and wiped me out. That was the closest Walmart to me at 45 minutes away. All good things come to an end.
Do you know if the 30K limit will be per GC login or per shipping address? If address, then a little more complicated to work around.
I don’t know. I think it might be shipping, just based on the fact that any time I’ve tried to use a family member’s account to place a third order, it never goes through when I try to get it shipped to the same address. I’ll give it a try next week and see how it goes. You can always try getting your cards delivered to your workplace if you and a member of your household are both ordering from GC.com.
Is the limit shared across multiple sites? i.e. 30K between both GCM and GC.com? Or is it 30 K per site?
Arianna –
Ditto Bobs comment. GCM always had a $15k monthly limit – has this changed?
Please clarify: “Starting December 1, Giftcards.com, Giftcard Mall, and Cardpool will all be imposing a $30,000 monthly limit on gift card purchases.”
That’s what my source told me. My guess is GCM might be increasing its limit. We’ll see!
Ariana ,is it possible to use 4 $200 vgc to buy one $800 mo at wm ?
Yes, you can do that. When I have a bunch of $200 – $300 cards, I combine two of each for a $999.30 money order ($1,000 with the $0.70 fee).
Sweet , thank you !
I expect Staples online VGC orders will count toward the 30,000 limit, since they come from GCM.
Bad news for me as I was doing 95k per month with them and don’t have a Simon Mall nearby. If I use relatives accounts can they place orders using my credit card accounts if they are authorized users?
I don’t know if they track it by card or billing/shipping address.
Where do you liquidate all of that?
I have a friendly Walmart and four bank accounts
Have your banks given you any problem with that many money orders?
95k a month in 1k money orders to 4 bank accounts dam! Did you get any accounts shut down? How long have you been doing this. I saw navy federal has 500 card with no activation fee, was thinking of getting them aong with GCM with my USAA 2.5 cash back card
I’ve been at it about 3 years. I was doing the whole 90k into one credit union for about two years until they told me I couldn’t deposit any more money orders. They didn’t close my account though, its still open. So far no issues with the four banks that I’m using.
I took the first step to order some VGCs from GCM using its $3 off coupon. The order is in process state and shows shipping tomorrow. I forgot about Yazing. I will sign up later using Ariana’s referral link. Thanks.
Yazing doesn’t have referral links, but I appreciate the support!
Any data points on using Yazing for MGCs (1.25%) and also using the $5 off Mastercard promo code? I’m wondering if its going to be a pain to get the cashback. Did one last night, submitted report on Yazing this morning and no reported transactions.
It will only work if the shopping portal you’re using has the promo code (MASTERGIFTING) listed. If not, then you won’t get portal cash back.
I went through Yazing to order some MGCs on Nov 28th and I’m only getting 1% even though the portal said 1.25%.
I would reach out to Yazing to rectify this. I have not had this issue yet.
Very odd, Yazing doesn’t mention that anywhere and on flyertalk others are mentioning getting CB when using GCM codes with TCB (I know its a different site, but figured it would be similar).
But is TCB listing the codes? Shopping portals vary.
No, TCB is not listing the codes. Thats what makes this odd. Put in an order today using yazing with no code. They are going to followup on my transactions, so we’ll see what happens. The guy at yazing did mention that MGCs are only tracking at 1% but that it should be fixed soon.
Got rejected at WM using the MGC, coming up as a credit card. Anyone else have that issue?
They get processed as credit cards. So you have to hit the “change payment” button very quickly after swiping your card to switch to debit.
I have two separate Giftcards.com accounts and a separate Giftcardmall.com account. Is Top Cash Back’s limit for each account separately or collectively for all 3 ??
Hey Ariana, has there been any more info or further clarifications on these changes? Is it per portal aka do $30k at yazing, another $30k at tcb etc?
Is it per site, aka $30k at GCs.com, another $30k at gcm per month? Is it a combo of both of these scanrios (best case?) or the worse possible outcome, $30k combined hard cap no matter which site or portal used?
It’s really confusing cause they’re all owned by BHN (would’ve been better if they just said the max amount for all BHN purchases). Just wish someone would shed light on the more nuanced Qs we MSers have.
Ariana, I’m also wondering if there has been any further clarification on if the change has been $30K per portal or $30K in total at GCs.com. Thank you much!
Good question. I’ll follow up with the Yazing folks.