In my recent post “10% off everything and 7% off everything else,” I showed how one could buy OfficeMax gift cards at a discount and then upgrade them in-store to more valuable gift cards (such as Amazon gift cards and Visa gift cards). If you don’t have a cooperative OfficeMax nearby, Bed Bath & Beyond may be a good alternative.
Buy Bed Bath & Beyond gift cards at a discount
Every now and then, gift cards are available at a nice discount. In the weeks leading up to Father’s Day, for example, there were many great options for buying gift cards for 20% off (for examples, see my June post “It’s raining gift card deals”). I’m hoping and expecting to see similar discounts during the inevitable (and dreaded by kids) Back to School sales in August. If you see deals like this, you might want to consider buying Bed Bath & Beyond gift cards.
When no public sales are available, you can still get gift cards at a discount through gift card resellers. GiftCardGranny.com is a good place to start your search. Currently they list Bed Bath & Beyond gift cards at up to 10% off. If you find good discounts at PlasticJungle, you can increase your savings by starting at TopCashBack and clicking through to PlasticJungle in order to save another 4% off of the sale price.
Upgrade In-Store
Last week, I took my $25 Bed Bath & Beyond gift card to the store and used it to buy a $25 Visa gift card. The Visa gift card included a $3.95 fee, so I paid the extra with an existing Visa gift card from my wallet. Normally, I wouldn’t recommend buying $25 Visa gift cards since the fee is a whopping 16% of the card’s value, but $3.95 is a small price to pay for completing a Frequent Miler Laboratory experiment. The transaction went through without comment from the cashier.
So, assuming your local Bed Bath & Beyond is similarly accommodating, what gift cards can you buy with your Bed Bath & Beyond gift card? Well, despite their enormous gift card section, I didn’t see much of value besides the Visa and Mastercard gift cards. They sell the standard stuff: movie cinema cards, Nook, iTunes, StarBucks, and a number of restaurants. I didn’t see any Amazon cards, gas cards, or travel cards (such as Southwest or Marriott). See grainy photos below.
The best value I could find were $100 Mastercard and Visa cards. These come with a $5.95 fee, though. That’s a hefty 6% fee. When compared to the 3.5% fee at OfficeMax for their $200 Visa cards, this is a lot. However, if you do manage to snag Bed Bath & Beyond gift cards for 10% off or better, this could be a solid deal.
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The guy is a liar. You can’t buy gift cards or visa cards with gift cards or visa cards. Felony crime of money laundering. Don’t just make shit up on your blog That you know nothing about
Incorrect.
It is not a crime to buy gift cards with gift cards. It is true that most stores don’t allow it, but some do. I haven’t tried this in years at Bed Bath and Beyond (this article was written in 2012), but at the time it worked for me.
How can I find which bed bath and beyond stores take my merchandise credit card and allow me to use it to get a gift card here in LA area.
There catching on to you!
they are gone now. Whoever bought them, please report back on your results! 🙂
Interesting…you gave me an idea, I’ll see if my local store sells reload cards.
I’m wondering if you can use the e-codes to purchase gift cards online too.
LOL! I am in.
I’m not sure if they take e-codes at the store or not. I would guess not. However, you can take your e-code and buy a physical gift card from bedbathandbeyond.com. I believe shipping is free so just have it shipped to you and take it to the store
Can you use the e-code ones in store?
Nice tip. To thank you I think we readers need to chip in to buy you a new camera to replace that piece of crap you take your gift card display photos with 🙂
Greek2me: Ha! You can blame the bad photos on my iPhone 4 and my unsteady hands. I’ll download one of those apps that waits until the camera is steady to take the shot. And, re: e-codes, I imagine you’re asking because PJ is selling one for 10% off… Do you want to give it a try and let us know if it works? You could always go with Josh’s trick if it doesn’t.