Good morning everyone, I hope your weekend is off to a great start. I have written about Gift Card Granny many times before (1, 2, 3, etc.) – it is my go to source every time I want to buy or sell a gift card. In today’s post, I will give you an introduction, overview, and review of Gift Card Granny’s loyalty program – Granny Rewards. The program is free to join, you just need to create a free Gift Card Granny account. To motivate you to join, they provide 2,500 points as a sign up bonus (warning: 2,500 points is not worth much).
Sign up for your free Granny Rewards account here.
After you join Granny Rewards, your points will start to add up every time you purchase a gift card or egift card from a gold star merchant.
As of August 13, 2016, here is the current list of gold star merchants (this list may change over time):
Gift Card Granny works with several large gift card resellers. Here is the current list of gift card resellers listed on Gift Card Granny, along with their sales data and gift card inventory.
I needed to purchase a Tommy Bahama gift card for my mom, so I found a $50 Tommy Bahama egift card for sale on Gift Card Zen for $40. Currently, Gift Card Zen is a gold star merchant, so I will earn points with Granny Rewards.
Gift Card Zen is one of my favorite gift card resellers (Raise and SaveYa being my 2 other favorites). Their order process is quick and easy, they ship very fast from Phoenix, AZ, and provide USPS First Class Mail tracking on every order. Digital egift card orders are also available right away.
After my $40 purchase, I went back to my Gift Card Granny account so see how fast the points would post to my account. The points posted almost immediately. I only have data points from Gift Card Zen, so I am not sure how fast points post for other gold star merchants. I would assume they are instant, but YMMV. I’ve been a member of Granny Rewards for about a month and didn’t know what was going on until I looked at the loyalty program in more detail. The $40 egift card earned me 1,000 points. I calculated the earning rate on my other purchases and it looks like 25 points / dollar is the standard earning rate.
So what redemption options are currently available? As of today, there is only one redemption option available: $5 SaveYa egift card in exchange for 25,000 points. Since you earn 25 points / dollar, you will need to purchase $1,000 in gift cards from gold star merchants to receive a $5 SaveYa egift card. $5 rebate for a $1,000 purchase is 0.5% return. Considering most gift card resellers are not available through cash back portals, 0.5% return is better than nothing (but just barely).
As a side note, if you purchase a gift card or egift card from Raise, please consider using my Raise affiliate link here or in my right sidebar. Thank you for your support :)
Long story short, Gift Card Granny’s loyalty program is not great, but it’s better than nothing. If you do large volumes of gift card buying from gold star merchants, you should be able to rack up the points very quickly. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!
Since granny was bought by SaveYa, it has harmed competition severely and allowed SaveYa to mine the data of their rivals in an extremely uncompetitive manner, forcing both closures and lower discounts for consumer to make up for the 2% per transaction fee imposed upon everyone else.
I’d suggest supporting exchanges that provide you with a service you deem quality by using GiftCardWiki.com
Do you have a link or any details about SaveYa buying Gift Card Granny? I had no idea and I spent the last 10 minutes trying to find the data.
Edit: I did find that they have the same address…
Gift Card Granny’s address:
495 Mansfield Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15205 (https://www.giftcardgranny.com/contact/)
SaveYa’s address:
495 Mansfield Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15205 (https://www.saveya.com/terms)
To each their own, but to anyone not familiar with Raise you should be aware that they don’t physically hold the gift cards. They’re essentially the eBay of the exchanges. The downside to this fraud is much more rampant. Case in point: I bought a Togo’s gift card last week which was drained by the time I received it. The way it works: I buy the gift card, Raise verifies the balance, then fraudster drains the card before mailing it to me. I’ve had more than a dozen bad cards from Raise over the years, by far the highest rate of issues compared to the other main exchanges.
YMMV, but I’d never recommend them to anyone over the other exchanges (SaveYa, Cardpool, CardCash even).
I haven’t run into any issues with Raise (yet), I try to only buy egift cards through Raise and use them the same day. I hope you were able to get your money back on your fraudulent Togo’s gift card.
Worth noting that on one occasion I threatened to file a charge back with my credit card if they didn’t complete the refund. I’m a very rational person and I waited literally an entire month and 5+ emails before making the threat. The last 2 emails weren’t even answered and it had been 10+ days since a reply. As soon as I made the threat (in a response in the same email string) I had a response within 15 minutes and a pending refund a few hours after. While I’m sure this happens to all businesses at some point or another (especially with volume) this incident left a bad taste in my mouth and I only buy from Raise if there aren’t any other options, if I’m using it within a week or two, and if the discount is large enough to justify the chance of time and hassle of fraudulent cards.
What you said at the end (“if I’m using it within a week or two, and if the discount is large enough to justify the chance of time and hassle of fraudulent cards.”) is a very important point. The longer you hold onto gift cards and egift cards, the higher the chance that problems occur. Buy them and use them as quickly as possible, that’s the best way to approach gift cards in the secondary market.
Raise is terrible to deal with . At least 10 bad cards in only a year and a half. They say their cards never expire but they don;t check. I bought a Landrys gift card and it turned out to be a groupon gift card so it expired. Raise did not take care of the issue and I was out even though it was false advertising by Raise
Dang, that’s bad. I might have to reconsider my next Raise gift card purchase. I’m sorry you were out the money and that Raise wasn’t able to help you.