Good morning everyone!  This post is a public service announcement that is probably way overdue, but better late than never.  If you have been following Doctor of Credit, Frequent Miler, or Miles to Memories over the past 1-2 months, you are probably aware of all the gift card (and egift card) deals that have been announced this holiday season.  Every gift card deal usually has a stated limit on the number of gift cards you can purchase.  The best deals usually have a limit of 1, whereas the less popular deals have a higher limit of 3-5 gift cards.

In this post, I will show you why it is better to purchase every egift card individually, rather than all at once.  The data in this post is solely based on my experience purchasing egift cards from PayPal Digital Gifts, an automated service where you can purchase egift cards directly from PayPal on eBay.  In the example below, I purchased a $100 eBay egift card for $95 during one of their sales.  I bought and paid for the below eBay egift card on 12/23 at 10:22pm PST.

Quick tip: you can roll your savings by purchasing an eBay egift card with a previously bought eBay egift card.  Keep rolling the $5 savings every time there is a new eBay egift card deal.

Help a blogger: I would greatly appreciate your support if you use my eBay affiliate link to purchase anything on eBay, just click the eBay logo in the sidebar.  Thank you!

14 minutes later, I received the eBay egift card in my inbox.  That is a pretty fast turnaround time.  This is what happens when you buy an egift card individually.

By comparison, I had a few eBay egift cards lying around and I needed to book some Southwest Airlines flights.  I went on eBay, found a PayPal Digital Gifts listing and bought 2 $100 Southwest Airlines egift cards and paid with my eBay egift card.  The PayPal payment went through on 12/26 at 4:04pm PST.

12 minutes later, I received the first $100 Southwest Airlines egift card in my inbox.  Where was the second $100 Southwest Airlines egift card?  I waited a few minutes, then hours, but still no egift card.  I decided to send a message on eBay to PayPal Digital Gifts (no response yet).

Then approximately 2 days, 2 hours, and 24 minutes after the initial PayPal payment, I received the second $100 Southwest Airlines egift card in my inbox.

I purchased a few other egift cards from PayPal Digital Gifts over the last week and here are the times.  With the exception of my 2+ day wait, all the other egift cards arrived within 20 minutes, on average.  This leads me to conclude that purchasing each egift card individually is the preferred way to order multiple egift cards from PayPal Digital Gifts.

Have you had a similar experience as me, or did you receive multiple egift cards at the same time?  Please let me know in the comments section.  If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.  Have a great day everyone!