Background

2nd quarter of Discover will end in 10 days. I don’t spend much on these categories (restaurants and movies), and usually, these GCs can be purchased from GC resellers with more than 5% discount. So, I hadn’t even tried anything to earn bonus rewards until I enrolled in Double All Cash Back promotion. Now, a category bonus reward is 10% cash back. Although there is not much time left, I tried to find a way to earn Q2 category bonus reward.

Transaction in a statement

As a test, I bought $50 e-gift card. A category of the transaction is Travel/Entertainment. I don’t know if it’s eligible for Q2 category bonus. As for Discover Deals, I received a cashback confirmation email a few days after the transaction. Hopefully, both category bonus and Discover Deals cash back will be posted and then doubled. When everything goes well, I can make a profit by buying and selling gift cards.

Physical or Electrical Gift Card?

I didn’t know much about Fandango. But at least I knew it was the website you could buy movie tickets online. And I thought their gift cards were used online only. For that reason, I assumed that Save Ya would accept e-gift cards for sale. That was a mistake. They need you to send physical gift cards for sale. Cardpool accepts e-gift cards, but payment is 5% less than a payment of physical gift cards sales.

Recalculation

If cash backs from DD and category bonus are posted and then doubled, e-gift cards are like 30% off price. Cardpool offers 70% for Fandango GCs. So, if you buy and sell e-gift cards, you can’t make a profit. If you buy and sell physical gift cards for 75% of face value, you can make a profit although physical gift cards charge a $1.95 fee. So, around 3% will remain in Discover’s reward. There is $1.95 fee per card and no discount even if you order multiple gift cards.

Physical Gift Card Order

I decided to keep $50 e-gift card for myself and order physical gift cards for resell. I ordered five $100 gift cards. The total is $509.75. Fandango has a promotion for GC purchase of $50 or more. For each order, I got one $20 promo code to spend at Shutterfly (one for e-code purchase and one for physical GC purchase, total two promo codes.) I don’t know what they are. I will find out later.

Summary

All Double Cash Back promo is great, but the timing is bad. It’s the last month of Q2 now, and there is no way to confirm all cash back before Q2 category bonus ends. Since I received an email from Discover Deals, it’s most likely that cash back from DD will be posted. Q2 category bonus remains unknown. But Discover has many discounted gift cards for redemption. I always redeem the reward for Staples GCs, which is 20% discount. Considering this, I won’t lose money even if Q2 category bonus won’t be posted.