Good afternoon everyone. If you can read and understand the title, you are an experienced travel hacker / MSer. My friend Mike sent me a picture of a current promotion running at his local Von’s (Safeway) grocery store. Purchase $150 or more in Visa or American Express Gift Cards and you will revive a coupon for $15 off your next $25 grocery purchase. The promo is running from November 4 to 17 and the coupon must be redeemed within 7 days of your gift card purchase. Assuming you buy gift cards on the last day of the promo (November 17), you have until November 24 (2 days before Thanksgiving) to redeem the coupon. This coupon could be great if you have lots of Thanksgiving grocery store purchases to make. I don’t know if you can redeem more than 1 coupon per transaction, but get creative.
Here are the full terms of the promo:
In other news, Chime Card has released some pretty good offers for travel. The Southwest Airlines, Virgin America, HotelTonight, and Airbnb offers are $5 off $50 while the Uber and Lyft offers are $2 of free credit. These offers are limited to the first 200 or so, so act fast if you are interested.
Last but not least, here are the current BankAmeriDeals (quite boring in my option):
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Have a great weekend everyone!
Is it worth the hassle after paying gift card fees?
VGC’s are MS’able if you have a 5% grocery credit card.
For example, $505.95 x 5% = $25 cashback – $5.95 fee = ~$19 profit with the $15 off $25 future grocery purchase being icing on the cake
Thanks. I forgot about the grocery cash back. I have a 3% card but seems still worth it now that I see the math.
Thank you Alex :)
Sorry to rain in on your party but variables are not included in the $15 off $25 coupon. Only fixed amounts are included.
Ahh bummer, that’s too bad. Thanks for the heads up.
That depends if you have an easy way to liquidate VGCs.
IMO yes if you shop at Safeway. Buy a $200 VGC (blue), take the Catalina coupon do $25 worth of shopping. Rinse and repeat. You can generate as many coupons as you want, one per transaction. They do expire after 7 days. But I’ve been using this to buy staple items in groups of $25 at a time, for a good discount. Things like jars of yeast, flower, sauces, canned items for pantry, etc. Filling my pantry and moved quite a few $200 VGC through WM since this started.
If you don’t shop at Safeway or it’s far from your house, then don’t bother.
Thanks Vicente, glad you are enjoying the promo. Happy shopping.
The deal works only on predefined denominations, not variables. Also, Safeway na sneaky move reminded all cards higher than $100. So in order to get this coupon you have to spend $11 in fees… I really not sure that $4 discount worth all the hussle — I get bigger discount if I go to Costco. Soooo… Not sure.
Hmm, I wonder if the cashier can override the gift card denominations to allow larger gift cards to be used.
The Pavillions market in my neighborhood (a Safeway store) no longer accepts credit cards for VGCs/MCGCs/AGCs — only cash or ATM debit cards with a PIN. Per two managers, their registers are coded to not accept credit cards as payment methods for GCs. Ralphs grocery stores, however, have happily accepted the extra $10k a month my wife and I bring them…
Just be careful with gift card fraud at Ralph’s. Keep on MSing :)
Data point: Safeway in Trivalley SFO Bay area did not offer the deal :)
Bummer, thanks for the update.
Grant…do the variable VGCs work for the Vons promo or is it only fixed value VGCs?
I’m not sure, I haven’t tested it out myself. Maybe Mike can answer your question :)
No! The flyer specifically excluded variables. The max amount I have in my nearby store is $100 with $6 fee.
Dang, that’s not a good deal to buy $100 VGCs.
Pingback: $15 Credit at Von's/Safeway with $150 Visa Gift Card Purchase - Doctor Of Credit
Fixed value gift cards only at Safeway. $6.95 purchase fee for $200 Visa gift card.
Thank you for the update. Too bad it only works on fixed value Visa gift cards.
I purchased 3x $500 VGCs (variable) today at a Safeway in CA. No $15 off coupons were printed at the checkout. This was prior to me knowing of the promo – so no harm done.
I wonder if you can show them the flyer they might be able to look it up on their system and provide you the $15 off coupons.
I bought one and thought it was just a problem with the register and went to the customer service counter.
I was caught off guard, it’s buried in the fine print, smaller than one could normally read… I made a comment that it was such small print, the CSR themselves had to look very closely to find it, but the cashier was able to go to the binder and print a coupon manually.
I wouldn’t try it more than once. Well, maybe I might go to a second or third store and see what happens.
As for whether the stores accept credit cards or are debit / cash only, it seems to be up to the store’s discretion. If you’re buying larger amounts, however, the cashier will likely need to get an override, and the manager may impose the policy.
I’ve had a similar situation before. Most of the time the cashiers/managers can override the system and print out the coupon. Happy shopping!
I needed to buy a few Visa/AMEX GCs to thank somebody, not MS. Since I don’t have Chase Ink or other Amex card that pays 5x at office stores (e.g. for Staples or recently dead OfficeMax deal), this is something I could actually use. Earlier today bought $200 Visa card at NoVA Safeway with a $6.95 fee, got my $15 coupon, turn around and spent it on food items. I consider this $8 in the positive plus I used my Premier Gold Rewards AMEX which pays 2x at supermarket. Also, the card is in my pocket, no waiting for it to be shipped. Not too bad, all things considered.
Glad you were able to buy a VGC for a friend and get a discount on groceries :)
Bought a variable at albertsons (so cal) today accidentally bc I didn’t read the promo closely. The manager was super nice though and gave me the coupon anyway!
Nice, that is what happened to me before. Nice managers are very helpful :)
I haven’t been in the US for 7 months but coming back in a month. I was wondering if the MS deals are still working with the Target Redcards? I changed my BB to a Redcard before I left. Can I buy VGCs from Staples and liquidate them at Target onto a Redcard? (Provided I add a PIN). What about the cards at Simon Malls, are they still working? Thanks for any info on this.
Thought I already posted a comment but it is gone. I was wondering if the Target Redcard is still working for liquidating Staple’s VGCs and Simon Mall VGCs?
Hi Ian, the Target Redcard is dead. No more credit or debt card reloads, only cash.
What prepaid card should I change Redbird to since gc reload is dead and just is thing in my drawer
I have the serve one cup. Very easy to load at Walmart money center kiosk. Frequent miler has a nice guide on how to do this
Serve One Cup?
Serve one vip?
Using my phone. Auto correct. That’s funny. VIP. Yes
Gotcha, silly autocorrect :)
Besides the $500 plus direct deposit, it will be a $1? Any other way to waive it
Just load $500 or more with a debit card online or in-store. No monthly fee then.
I just purchased $1000 of the variable visa gift cards with the $5.95 fee and I got an instant discount of $5 at Safeway
Nice, glad you got your coupon :)
Not a coupon. The discount applied on the visa gift card purchase itself. So I’m wondering if they’re having a kit her special