I have received the second email from ShopDiscover. Now for sure, cash back is available for the purchase of Target Visa GCs. I added one Target Visa GC and tried to check out with Discover it card. Then I knew I was completely unaware of shipping cost. It is eligible of free shipping when you purchase with REDcard, and when checking out with Target GCs they didn’t charge shipping cost, either. Anyway, they charge $1.95 for shipping, if I buy (1) $100 Target Visa GC with Discover it card:
- Pay a purchase fee (-$6.00)
- Pay shipping cost (-$1.95)
- 5% cash back from ShopDiscover ($5.30 <– $106 x 0.05 not applied for shipping)
- 1% cash back from Discover ($1.08)
- Total $1.57 loss
Shipping cost is the same, $1.95 if you order five gift cards. But still, the total of cash back doesn’t cover purchase fee and shipping cost. It is not worth a try. Now my choice is to give up or find a way to buy Target Visa GCs with Target GCs. Why did the first transaction go through? Why did the second and third attempts also go through, but cancel a minute later? The following I can come up with:
- My account is blocked because of the first purchase made with Target GCs
- The second purchase is too close from the day of the first one
- I clicked ShopDiscover’s link
Maybe my account is blocked. I had the same experience on Sears purchases. I ordered and checked out something at Sears.com. They cancelled my orders right after sending thank-you-for-your-order emails. My Sears account was blocked becasue I used SYW Max program, which is free shipping on almost all items for $79 a year, for my eBay business. I dropshipped tons of items to customers on eBay for more than 6 months. Sears detected and blocked my account.
But. what I bought at Target.com is only $100 gift card. I don’t think it is a big problem. The first purchase is 2 weeks ago. Again, it is only one $100 gift card I bought. The details on the page of Target Visa GC says “Limit on number of cards purchased.” It can’t be you can buy only one gift card a month.
The emails telling me that the order was cancelled is exactly one minute after a check-out. It seems to be automated. They don’t want to give cash back on the purchase of gift cards, so maybe they set to cancel the orders checked out through ShopDiscover. This may be the cause of cancellation. To find the answer, I made another attempt. I clicked a link on Coupay.com and checked out (1) $100 Target Visa GC with Target GCs.
It wouldn’t go through. Just like previous two orders, I received a confirmation email and then cancellation email. This time, however, things got worse. The refund are almost instanly come back to my gift cards on previous orders, but it didn’t on this order. What’s more, I couldn’t see the balance of gift cards, either. There was an error message when I tried to check the balance of gift cards.
The next day, it was available to get access to the balance of gift cards and I confirmed money was refunded. The series of incident scares me. I will no longer try to buy Visa GCs with Target GCs. The reason of cancellations hasn’t been clear yet, but I don’t want to risk losing money of Target GCs.
What I got from the experience is ShopDiscover will probably pay out on the purchase of Target Visa GCs. You can make profit when ShopDiscover has a promotion. During the promotion, some retailers cash back rate are added up by 5%. I’m not sure if there is a promotion that cash back rate of Target.com goes up to 10%. So, I will need to check every time ShopDiscover has a promotion. And using 4th quarter of Discover it card promotion, 5% cash back on all online shopping, will also make profit. (This promotion is limited on the total purchase of $1500, so it is better to use it for somewhere else, though)
Updated in June, 2014, Target introduced new shipping policy. All orders of $50 or more are eligible free shipping. With this new offer, I finally purchased Target Visa Gift Card with a credit card.