When shipping something at the Post Office last week, I noticed a gift card rack and saw they were offering a discount when buying Mastercard gift cards.
The advertising for that promotion mentioned a website I hadn’t been aware of before – a USPS website selling gift cards. Well, I say it’s a USPS website, but it’s actually at https://usps.giftcards.com/ a subdomain of GiftCards.com.
This works in a similar way to how GiftCardMall processes online gift card orders for Office Depot/OfficeMax. Another way the USPS/GiftCards.com offering is similar is that you can buy $500 Visa gift cards and get free trackable shipping. That’s particularly notable because GiftCards.com only sells Visa gift cards up to $250 nowadays, plus you have to pay for shipping, let alone making it trackable.
Cashback Test – Fail
The fact that the USPS offering is hosted on GiftCards.com’s own website made me wonder if it would be possible to earn cashback through a shopping portal. I therefore clicked through to GiftCards.com from TopCashback, removed the tracking code after ‘giftcards.com/’ and changed the ‘www’ to ‘usps’.
I then placed an order for a $500 Visa gift card to see if it would track. I hadn’t ordered anything else from GiftCards.com this month, so there wasn’t any concern about having already maxed out my $2,000 shopping portal limit for September.
Sadly, the purchase didn’t track. That’s a shame as it would’ve been nice to earn 1% cashback on the purchase as that would almost wipe out the cost of the $5.95 activation fee.
Edge vs Chrome
I tried placing an order a number of times using the Chrome browser, but kept getting an error which seemed to relate to the address. I reached out to USPS/GiftCards.com and received a reply from Blackhawk Network (which owns GiftCardMall and GiftCards.com) a day or two later advising things were working as they should be.
They suggested using Firefox or Chrome, even though Chrome was the browser I was having problems with. I tried placing another order in incognito mode on Chrome and had the same issue.
I then tried placing an order using the Edge browser (what was once Internet Explorer) and managed to get an order through. That suggests there’s a problem with the site on Chrome, so give Edge a try if you have similar problems.
Logged In Vs Logged Out
GiftCards.com and GiftCardMall can understandably be sensitive about gift card orders sometimes, so I thought it might help to set up an account on the USPS/GiftCards.com site first, saving my address and card details in advance.
That ended up causing an issue though. When logging in to my account and adding a $500 Visa gift card to my cart, it showed the card as having no activation fee. You might think that would be a good thing rather than a problem, but it wouldn’t let me progress further along in the ordering process.
I tried logging out of my account, but that didn’t work either – I was basically stuck in limbo. I therefore had to close the browser, then opened it up again in incognito/InPrivate mode. Adding a Visa gift card to my cart and checking out as a guest rather than logging in to my account did the trick.
How It Codes
Seeing as the USPS gift card site is just a white-labeled site by GiftCards.com, USPS doesn’t process payment. That means Blackhawk Network/GiftCards.com processes the payment.
That’s a shame because it means you can’t earn a bonus by paying with a card that earns more on shipping costs.
Another Amex MS Option
With GiftCardMall and GiftCards.com limiting maximum loads on Visa gift cards to $250, those are far less attractive as online options due to the increased activation fees. With Visa gift card purchases from Simon Mall not earning points on American Express credit cards either in-store or online, that’s not an option if you’re trying to rack up Membership Rewards or miles/points on co-branded cards like Hilton or Delta.
If you’re looking to manufacture spend on Amex cards by buying Visa gift cards online, your options are therefore fairly limited. That’s why the OfficeDepot/OfficeMax/GiftCardMall option and this newly discovered (well, new to me) USPS/GiftCards.com option can be a great opportunity for racking up spend from home.
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n.b. The two links to the USPS/GiftCards.com site in this post seem to use an affiliate link as there’s a line of code I use on GC Galore to automatically convert GiftCards.com links to affiliate links. I just wanted to highlight that because if you click the link in the post but want to test out the shopping portal trick I tried but failed with, you’ll want to click through from a shopping portal in a different browser or an incognito window. That’s because you’d have cookies placed on your computer from the click through to usps.giftcards.com from this site which would affect any chance you’d have of earning cashback through a portal.
Appreciate the comment at the end about the tracking cookie – wish all blogs could be upstanding like that.
Thanks! It hadn’t occurred to me initially that the USPS site would end up getting routed through an affiliate link. It was only because I copied the link when previewing the post to add another link at the end of the post that I realized it had done that.
I always try to include a specific mention on any post whenever there’s an affiliate link, rather than just having generic wording on every post saying there might be an affiliate link as it’s easy to overlook that generic wording. If there’s an affiliate link in the post, it often means the reader could earn cashback through a portal, so if that’s the case I try to remember to include a link to the retailer on Cashback Monitor too.
[…] 9/21/20: GCGalore also noticed now that giftcards.com also still sells $500 Visa gift cards at the usps.giftcards.com […]
Never requested a VGC via mail before. Now thinking of ordering a couple to use the Discover Q3 category bonus. Wondering how risky it is i.e., what if the mail never arrives…$1K lost?
This comes with free trackable shipping, so you’ll be able to see what happens with the mail which reduces the risk of it just going missing at some point. If it shows as being delivered but you never received it, you should be able to contact GiftCards.com and have them cancel the cards and reissue new ones.
They don’t accept Discover
if you have the Discover CC linked to a paypal key, then pay with paypal key#, that should work, right?
Does the merchant shown on credit card statement displayed as USPS or GiftCards.com/GiftCardMall or BlackHawk?
It was BHN*GIFTCARDS 844-5846337 CA
Thank you much for your quick response.
Can we customize with our name on the card
I don’t think they gave that option when placing an order.
Thanks , thought so . while placing the order it just asked To Name, but didnt get changed on the card like GCM.
It would be very difficult to liquidate without name on the card
Also just noticed , even https://www.vanillagift.com/ is selling 500 vanilla visa online for 5.95 fees + 9$ shipping. But can be customize with your name and choose designs , but cannot be liquidated in wally world
This site isn’t allowing 10x$500 purchases anymore… at least as of yesterday.
Does it give you an error when actually placing the order then? I was able to add 10 to my cart, but didn’t try to actually check out.
Stephen,
Can you buy these VGCs with a registered Vanilla VGC? Vanilla is hard to liquidate and I am trying to see if I could buy one from gc.com with Vanilla. So far I’ve been getting error messages about the payment method. Have you had any luck or you have any idea? Thanks!
I’m afraid I’m not sure – I’ve never tested buying with a Vanilla VGC.