Well, this sucks.
About a year ago, Speedway started selling variable load Vanilla Visa gift cards. That could be useful in and of itself if you had credit cards that earned more at gas stations, but it was significantly better than that because you also earned Speedy Rewards points on the purchase.
Speedway offers 20x points for “merchandise” which included all third party gift cards and Visa gift cards. Buying a $500 Visa gift card therefore earned you 10,000 Speedy Rewards points (or possibly a few more – I forget if you earned points on the purchase fee). 10,000 points can be redeemed for ~$10 in Speedway gift cards when redeeming in larger increments, so buying Visa gift cards was profitable even before taking into account the credit card points you earn.
At some point in the last few days (seemingly March 6), Speedway stopped offering points when buying Visa gift cards. That’s a huge loss for anyone who was racking up both credit card points and free gas, especially with increasing gas prices.
Speedway used to be owned by Marathon, but was acquired by 7-Eleven last year. I therefore wouldn’t be surprised if 7-Eleven balked at how many points were being handed out, but if that’s the case it’s strange that it took them so long to turn off the tap.
What I’m not sure about is if third party gift cards are still earning Speedy Rewards points. Buying third party gift cards at Speedway isn’t as good a deal, even when they offer occasional bonus points on those. If you happen to buy other gift cards at Speedway, please let us know in the comments if those have stopped earning points too.
R.I.P.
h/t Joel & Nick
This is a huge loss to me. Still hoping it’s temporary, but I’m pretty sure it’s dead. It was good on so many levels like you mentioned, besides being the only known gas points in my area. I really appreciate originally learning this from you. Thanks
I had a transaction on the 6th, with both a small amazon card as well as the vgc. The Amazon card earned 40x, but nothing on the vgc.
BTW, some (but not all) of the speedways I frequent have signs up about a 300 points per $25 of value on restaurant cards…. (pittance actually…. on top of the 40x…) Not sure how long that promo was to be in effect, or if it actually worked.
the loss of vgc’s indeed is a huge loss. Anybody actually hazarded to confirm this directly with national sw?
With this kind of thing, I think it’s better to not try confirming with Speedway corporate in case it’s some kind of glitch that’s only temporary. If it is deliberate, Speedway might start carrying different flavors of Vanilla Visa gift cards in the future which they might forget to exclude from earning points, so best not to draw attention for this to the powers that be.
Understood….. though seriously, would be surprised if SW/7-11 doesn’t monitor sm. (just as they no doubt were aware of the extreme volume some…. were doing on the vgs. I get their logic — get while the gettin’s good — and in so doing, no doubt drew attention to it — and helped kill it. Would be great if this was a mere glitch, but unlikely.
ps, I’ve actually had modest good results calling that nat’l number on multiple issues in the past — everything from challenging (and overturning) local mgrs who would pompously claim national policy prevented them from accepted cc’s for gc purchases (a recurrent excuse – and false) to prodding them to finally get rid of those ancient sw redemption machines in stores.
This was the best deal in the history of MS, especially when they doubled the points to 20000 per $500 vanilla if you scanned the app instead of typing your number. I have no doubt. I will miss this deal dearly. BTW, the best way of redeeming the points was to maximize 25 gallons of gas with the discounts (8750 speedy points per 50 cts discount with no max as opposed to redeeming for speedy giftcards.) RIP free gas.