Update 10/31/24: There’s some good news on this front. Although the $5.95 purchase fee is now being charged, Giftcards.com has advised that you will in fact earn 1% back in Giftcards.com Rewards. That’s obviously not as good as when you were able to briefly earn 2% back in rewards with no purchase fee, but it does reduce the effective fee on $200 Gift of College cards to ~2%. When taking into account shopping portal rewards, Citi Offer cashback and/or credit card rewards, you should still come out ahead.
Update 10/28/24: These cards evidently proved popular as they’re currently sold out. Unfortunately there’s some bad news for when these do come back in stock. It looks like it was an error that the purchase fee of $5.95 wasn’t being charged, so Giftcards.com has advised that once they’re back in stock the fee will be charged.
It also sounds like it was an error that 2% Giftcards.com Rewards was listed as being awarded when adding these to your cart (I’m not sure if that was actually being credited or not though as I don’t have student loans or a kid in college and so hadn’t bought any of these for myself). If those 2% rewards were being awarded previously, that presumably won’t happen once these are back in stock.
That changes the math on buying these as the cards will now come with a 2.98% fee when buying $200 denominations while also not earning 2% Giftcards.com Rewards. Having said that, I imagine it’ll still be a viable option for people with Citi cards thanks to that 4% offer and/or those able to earn a decent rewards rate through a shopping portal.
The Deal
- Buy Gift of College gift cards from Giftcards.com.
- Direct link to offer (our affiliate link).
Key Terms
- $200 max load per card.
Tips & Ideas
This is a fantastic opportunity for people who save for their children’s education using Gift of College gift cards. These cards normally have a purchase fee which can limit the appeal depending on the denomination. Although the max load per card is only $200 (versus $500 for physical cards from some retailers in-store), Giftcards.com isn’t charging a purchase fee.
In addition to that, you can presumably earn rewards by clicking through from a shopping portal, plus there’s a Giftcards.com Citi Offer giving 4% back. Add on your credit card rewards and you’ve got the makings of a very rewarding savings opportunity.
The deal gets even better than that. If you order these when logged in to your account, you’ll also currently earn 2% back in Giftcards.com Rewards; just be sure to enroll in that free rewards program first. You can earn 500 points (worth $5) if you’ve not registered before.
Woah, anybody know how long this will last?
No idea I’m afraid
It’s listing a $5.95 activation fee and I’m not seeing where that is waived.
Are you seeing the $5.95 fee being charged in the cart? When adding a card to my cart it just showed it as $200.
Terms and Condition on giftcards.com
“Activation Fee: $5.95. The GiftofCollege® Gift Card (“Gift Card”) can only be redeemed online at GiftofCollege.com.”
Any indication how long this will last?
No indication I’m afraid
Any idea what the limit is per order?
The card page says you can ad up to 50 cards to your cart; whether or not they’d process an order that large is another matter though. Also bear in mind that portals tend to limit orders to $2,000 in order to earn rewards.
Nice, thanks!
Does anyone have any experience in what merchant category Giftcards.com codes for AMEX or Chase? Or maybe even as online shopping for BofA?
These are great for if you are fortunate enough to have family members who do gifting to a kid’s 529 account. And for those who have kids with disabilities, from what I’ve read they also can be used to fund ABLE accounts. Awesome to be able to get “free” CC points and rebates for these!
Data points:
Note: activate Giftcards.com Rewards if you haven’t yet on your account for a signup bonus.
thanks for the DP
I did $200 per order and the first two orders were instantly delivered. 3rd one was on hold then delivered about 2 hours after. Just did a 4th order for $200 and it’s on hold status again….
My first order $800 is on hold for a few hours so far.
Thank you. Cards are on hold, but this is huge with 2 kids in college!
Cards came in, but there is an error trying to redeem them on the gift of college site
Same for me after a few hour hold, can’t redeem now
Me three, can’t redeem or check balance on the Gift of College site. I did just create the account. Anyone with an already existing GofC account also having problems? Or maybe just new accounts?
I was able to redeem the first 4 $200 GCs earlier today, the 5th one isn’t working but when I checked the balance via phone it knows that it still has $200 balance. So it might be a temporary error with the site.
I had account previously..unable to redeem
Mine were able to be redeemed today, phew. Looks like it can take a couple weeks for the credits to transfer from Gift of College into the 529 account.
For the 4% Citi offer, it says that it can be used twice and the max is $32. Does anyone know if each transaction can result in $32 cash back, or $32 is the max between the two, combined?
The way I read it, it’s $32 max, and can be one or two transactions. So $800 in one transaction gives $32 or $600 and $200 or whatever combination of 2 transactions up to $800.
so between the 2% back in giftcards.com savings, plus you can easily get equivalent of 2% or 2 miles/$ with a shopping portal, plus the actual credit card spend, would be great to find someone who has a huge chunk of student loans to pay off.. could be making 5% back…
I got a couple grand if you’re volunteering haha. Jokes aside i hope this works (Im having redemption issues too) cause im pretty sure cap1 isnt approving me for ventureX because of my loan
Anyone having an issue redeeming these? First one was fine, but now it says to try again later… and the balance checker isn’t resolving.
Looks like PayPal is an option for payment, for those Freedom Flexers out there, might as well get that 5x!
I am unable to redeem cards. There was a issue redeeming your gift card, please try again. Am I doing something wrong?
It sounds like quite a few people are having this issue, so I imagine it’s a temporary problem.
When I’ve purchased these physical gift card at the grocery store they often don’t work right away but normally if I purchase in the morning i’m able to redeem by the end of the day.
Interesting, I’ve never observed that with cards purchased at gas stations / CVS. Never tried loading from the phone right away, but I usually redeem 15-20 mins after purchase, and never had an issue.
Hi Stephen, I bought $200 GC last night but when I went to GOC to redeem, I got this error message “there is an issue redeeming your GC”. Any idea how to resolve this? I email customer support from the GOC website and still waiting for answer. Thanks for your guidance. I could not balance check the card either.
Give it some time. A lot of people had this issue last night, myself included. Was able to load all the cards without any issues today.
Yes I was getting the same message/issue. I’ve redeemed physical gift cards on https://www.giftofcollege.com before with no problem (like someone above), but haven’t been able to redeem these digital cards today. I’ve called and they can “see” the gift card and confirm the $200 amount, but one rep from GoC told me to wait and try again tomorrow.
When I got transferred to a rep at giftcards.com she told me to try redeeming as a credit card, but then it charged $10 fee for total of $210 and told her I wasn’t willing to do that. She told me these are basically Visa gift cards. So I’m hoping the GoC rep was correct to tell me to wait, but it sure makes me nervous.
Reporting back that I was able to successfully redeem all 10 digital cards this morning (day after purchase)
sold out
I got points credited FWIW
Same.
I just placed order for a $200 card. I did receive 2% GC reward. I got 2.5% from Rakuten. I used PayPal and will receive 5X UR from Chase freedom. Total cost = $5.95. Total return = $4 from GC + 500 MR or $7.5 + 1000 UR or $15 =$26.5. Profit = ~$20. Sounds correct, right?
Yep, if you value Membership Rewards and Ultimate Rewards at 1.5cpp then that sounds right. In fact, it’d be slightly better as you’d be earning 1,030 Ultimate Rewards due to the $5.95 fee.
Stephen, sounds like giftcards.com got in touch with you, do you have a sense on whether this was a bug or a legit promotion? Trying to gauge how realistic it would be to expect this deal again in the future.
I get the impression that they’ll be selling Gift of College cards on an ongoing basis, but I’m not certain about that. It sounds like them not charging the $5.95 purchase fee was an error, as was them awarding Giftcards.com Rewards on purchases. That said, based on other comments the latter is still working, but I wouldn’t count on that sticking around for long.
I’ve made a number of orders. All orders in Oct earned 2% gc.com rewards, orders in Nov earned 1%. Rakuten is still doing 2.5%, but should eventually go back down to 1%. Thanks for the alert on this one, was able to knock out some good freedom 5x spend with paypal on this one. And got 2 orders in with zero purchase fees. Overall a good little week long hit for me.
I’m only seeing the ability to purchase $100 gift cards now. Not sure if this is an error or not, but $6 on each $100 GC absolutely kills this for me.