A number of online portals offer cash back or miles when purchasing American Express gift cards. This presents a great opportunity to run up spend on credit cards to meet minimum spend requirements, hit big spend thresholds, or just to earn regular everyday rewards. For more about Amex gift cards, please see:
For the past 9 months or so, most portals have offered 1.5% cash back for Amex gift cards, but they regularly offer one-day increased rates as well. The special one-day offers seem random, but they’re not. At least for now, they seem to be predictable.
Two weeks ago I posted my observations about repeated Amex gift card portal deals, and I used the information I had found to predict the next deals. Since then, each of the cash back portals I had written about has offered a one day Amex gift card deal. While a couple of my predictions were very close, it turned out that I was working from incomplete information. Readers informed me, for example, that BeFrugal had offered 2.2% cash back on June 12th and June 26th. Also, eBates apparently ran their app-only 2% cash back offer on May 25th. I was also informed that when BeFrugal advertises 2.2% cash back, they really give 2.25% cash back. So, going forward, I’ll report the BeFrugal offers as 2.25% cash back.
Updated data
By combining information from readers and recent offers as reported via Quick Deals, I’ve updated the historical data as follows:
Observed Trends
- BeFrugal offers 2.25% cash back for business gift cards every other Friday
- TopCashBack offers 2.25% cash back for business gift cards every other week
- TopCashBack usually offers their deal on Tuesday except on weeks when Ebates offers 2% through their app. This may be a coincidence since we only have two data points showing this.
- Simply Best Coupons offers 2% cash back for business gift cards every other week.
- Simply Best Coupons offers their deal the day before TopCashBack (true for only the last 3 occurrences, so I wouldn’t bank on it)
- Ebates offers 2% cash back for both personal and business gift cards (in-app) on the last or second to last Monday of each month
August Predictions
Based on the observed trends (above), we can make the following predictions for August:
- BeFrugal will offer 2.25% cash back on August 7 and 21 (and Sept 4)
- TopCashBack will offer 2.25% cash back during the weeks of August 3, 17, and 31
- TopCashBack may offer their deals on Tuesday August 4, and August 18 (and Sept 1)
- Simply Best Coupons will offer 2% cash back on the same weeks as TopCashBack
- Simply Best Coupons may offer their deals on the days preceding TopCashBack deals (i.e. August 3, 17, 31)
- Ebates will offer 2% cash back in-app on August 17, 24, or 31
- If Ebates offers 2% on August 17 or 31, then SimplyBestCoupons and TopCashBack will offer their deals later the same week rather than on Monday and Tuesday.
See Also
- The complete guide to Amex gift cards
- My Amex gift card strategy
- How to earn 4% cash back on all spend
- Predicting the next Amex gift card deals