The Offer
- Target is offering 10% on up to $300 in target gift card purchases for Black Friday
The Fine Print
- Valid from 6am–noon CT at Target.com, November 28th
Our Verdict
The discount is automatically applied to your cart when you go to check out. You’ll need to purchase one $200 card and one $100 card. There are no card fees or shipping fees for purchasing these giftcards. Here is what my cart looks like when I check out:
Here is how to make this deal profitable:
- Purchase $300 in target gift cards for $270 using a cash back card that earns at least 2% (-$270 for the gift cards and +$5.4 in cash back) Update: Reader Rich kindly pointed out that this should earn 5% cash back if you use the Discover it as it should code as online shopping. You’d earn $13.5 cash back if you used this method.
- Sell the gift cards to Giftcards.com for 90.5% of their face value (+$271.5)
In total you’d spend $270 and receive $276.9 back for a small profit of $6.9 (if you used the Discover it you’d earn $15 profit). I personally don’t think this is worth the effort when using a 2% cash back card, although it is definitely worth doing with the Discover it if it codes as a 5% cash back trasnaction. If you’re meeting a minimum spend requirement then it might be worth the trouble as well.
According to the Frequent Miler laboratory if you purchase a physical giftcard through a shopping portal you will not receive cashback/points. But if you use a giftcard to purchase merchandise then you will receive the cashback/points. This is a bit of a bummer, but if you actually want to make some purchases at Target then you can use this to make your money go further (shop at home earns 5% cash back, you can also get 4 Amtrak points or AA miles per $1).
My plan is to try to purchase the gift cards through a portal in the hopes that it’ll track, I don’t have much confidence but it’s worth a shot. I’ll then just keep the gift cards for regular purchases I’d normally make at Target, if I still find them unused after Christmas then I’ll resell them. I’m confident that the resell value on Target gift cards will hold.
I personally think that the $15 GAP gift card money maker we posted about earlier today is a better deal.
HT to points, miles & martinis
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