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【This article was originally published as a 101 Express post on July 16, 2020】

Recently, a DOC reader shared an interesting use case. With an AMEX credit card enrolled in Shop Small, you can stock up on $10 eGifter Choice Cards, eGifter’s own gift card, effectively buying them at half price, and then use those eGifter Choice Cards to purchase other gift cards (you still cannot buy Amazon or Walmart gift cards).

The best-value play: after accumulating 10 eGifter Choice Cards, directly buy one $100 Visa eGC, effectively getting it at half price.

KUKU tested this right away; see the detailed process below. If you still have cards with unused Shop Small offers, this may be worth trying. Just do N*10 eGifter Choice Cards, then redeem them for the corresponding $10xN gift card.

eGifter and Shop Small

Gift card site eGifter also qualifies for AMEX Shop Small, and it’s one of the few small businesses that actually places AMEX’s official promo right on its homepage.

They actually put an AMEX ad on their own website

Unlike Fluz, this site has no referral bonus and no new-user bonus. Also note that it does not support buying Amazon or Walmart gift cards with a credit card, so it may not be very popular.

eGifter has long triggered the AMEX Shop Small offer, but almost nobody used it because you can’t directly buy Amazon or Walmart gift cards with a CC; those require paying in full with eGifter Points. For Visa eGCs with potential value, redemption starts at $25 (with a $3.95 fee), $50 (with a $4.95 fee), and $100 (with a $5.95 fee), so buying them directly is not a great deal. Meanwhile, Apple & iTunes has a minimum purchase amount of $15, which is also a bit high.

Stacking Redemptions With eGifter Choice

We can use AMEX Shop Small to stack up 10 eGifter Choice Cards, then redeem them for other gift cards. A $100 eVGC is the recommended option.

KUKU tried this method. Here’s a quick recap of the purchase process:

Select the eChoice gift card
  • Add your AMEX credit card for the purchase. Your first order may have some chance of being canceled (YMMV).
  • From the homepage, go to “Support — Help Center” and submit a Requst, saying that you really like eGifter but your order got canceled and you want to know why.
  • Once customer service replies, usually the same day, they will ask you to place the order again using the same method.
Hi there --

We did find the issue that was preventing our system from accepting your order. Really sorry for the inconvenience!

Please go ahead and enter a Replacement Order:
1. Same email address as the original
2. Same (or less) value
3. Within 7 days of the original

As always, we recommend an extra step to make sure that information is entered correctly (including name, address, phone number and email.

  • After that, you should receive an AMEX email confirming that the offer was triggered successfully.
  • Then accumulate 10 or 20 eGifter Choice Cards—though I wouldn’t recommend doing all 10 at once; spread them out over several days—then redeem them for gift cards other than Amazon and Walmart.

Being able to buy a $100 eVGC for $55.95 is pretty solid. If you’re experienced, a $100 eGC can also be worth more than $100 in practical use. This Deal is definitely not bad.

I recommend accumulating ten $10 eChoice cards, then redeeming for a $100 VGC; this screenshot just uses one card as a demo

You can also use accumulated eGifter Choice Cards to buy a $100 Apple & Itunes gift card in one shot, since direct CC purchases require at least $15. That’s another possible option.

If you don’t have many Shop Small uses left, just do N*10 eGifter Choice Cards, then redeem them for the corresponding $10xN gift card.

Downsides

On new accounts, eGifter Choice Card orders can sometimes get canceled, though sometimes they don’t; it seems somewhat related to the card and IP, YMMV. If you feel the cancellation rate is too high, then this probably isn’t worth pursuing.

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H/T: DOC