You may see a lot of Father’s Day’s promotions throughout the web. The promotions are not limited to regular merchandises, you may also see the promotion on gift card purchases. Personally, I just bought Staples and Best Buy e-gift cards and happened to know that there was a cash back portal site for BBY e-GC purchases.
Many merchants sell e-gift cards as well as physical gift cards. Some merchants pay cash back for purchases of both physical and e-gift cards, and some merchants don’t pay for either of them. And also some merchants pay only for physical gift card purchases. This may happen because e-gift cards are sold at different sites called Cashstar.
When you enter bestbuy.com and click Gift cards on the top, you are still in bestbuy.com. However, when you click Get Started (left at the bottom of the picture below,) you are taken to the outside of bestbuy.com. A web address is bestbuy.cashstar.com. The same things happen to some other merchants. For example, you enter gap.com and try to buy an e-gift card, you are taken to gap.cashstar.com.
If you have Amex Offer, you can’t redeem some of them with e-gift card purchases because of this fact. That’s why you see “e-gift cards are excluded” in terms and conditions of many offers. It actually happened to me with Chime Offer. The offer was $5 back on $50 or more spent at Best Buy. I purchased $50 e-gift card, but I couldn’t see $5 credit posted in my account. An hour later, I purchased $50 physical gift card. $5 credit was posted instantly.
Today, I happened to find this “Cashstar” in cashbackmonitor.com while I was checking cash back rate for other merchants. So, I have no idea how it’s been existing. SimplyBestCoupons offered the highest, 2% cash back yesterday. Best Buy’s link was in the section of sale/discount. I clicked the link and bought $150 e-gift card. Soon, I received an email from SimplyBestCoupons, and a pending cash back was posted. So many merchants use Cashstar for e-gift card selling, but merchants offering cash back seem to be limited. I check the website today, and they have updated terms and conditions. Now you can see a full list of merchants that is available for cash back. And the rate is reduced to 1.75%.
What I like about Simply Best Coupons is that they send an email for all transactions very quickly. They send an email and post $0 even when you purchase something that is not qualified for cash back. I bought Starbucks gift card at Target.com on 6/2.
As you see, I received $0. So, I’m sure that the item is not qualified for cash back. (As long as I know, there is at least one GC at Target.com is qualified for cash back.) And also, they sometimes offer 2% cash back on Amex Business gift card purchases. The next offer is coming soon. It’s on 06/22/2015. If you don’t have your account yet, please use my referral link to sign up.