Bad news on the manufactured spending front: Stephen Pepper reports at GC Galore that GiftCardMall is reducing the monthly cap for orders that qualify for cash back from $60K per month down to $2K per month. This change is officially effective on June 29th, though individual portals could of course change their own terms at any time. That’s a huge change that doesn’t bode well for online MS at the moment.
A few months ago, when we broke the news about Simon Malls making their $1K gift cards available for online purchase, we noted that the Simon cards would not be the cheapest form of MS (and indeed some readers chimed in to say the same). That’s because sites like Gift Card Mall have long been available through cash back portals, which reduces net cost considerably (See our guide to the Best options for buying Visa and Mastercard gift cards). While payout rates and caps have varied some over time, the current monthly cap for Gift Card Mall purchases has been up to $60K in orders per month. Affiliates have been notified that the cap will be reduced to $2K in orders per month as of June 29th. It is possible that some affiliates (i.e. shopping portals) will make the change sooner than that.
This is certainly bad news. While both GiftCardMall and GiftCards.com have long had the same $60K monthly cap, this new reduction thus far only affects GiftCardMall. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a similar move from GiftCards.com, though it hasn’t happened yet.
If you were planning to place a GiftCardMall order before this change takes effect, I would strongly recommend taking screen shots of the cash back terms / caps listed on your shopping portal of choice when placing your order. Since we know the cap is going to change before you receive payment for the cash back and we don’t know if all portals will change the cap on the same date, I’d definitely want to keep good records (and also take a screen shot of any pending activity).
Hopefully this shift is temporary given the current economic environment because it would certainly be a disappointing change otherwise.
H/T: GC Galore
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Nick Reyes is a (fairly) regular guy with an animalistic passion for maximizing the value of miles and money to travel the world in comfort and style. There is little in life that he loves more than finding a fantastic deal and helping you shop smarter & harder to achieve your travel dreams.
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