Quick background: Discover is currently running two overlapping promotions: an extra 10% cash back for Apple Pay purchases made through December 31st, plus double all cash back for a year. Each promotion is amazing on its own. Taken together, they’re fantastic. You can get 20% back on all Apple Pay purchases, in addition to your usual credit card rewards! But… until now, we didn’t know whether or not gift card purchases would work… You can find full details about the promotions here and here.
Results are in: no gift cards
I awoke this morning to a flood of emails, tweets, and comments from blog readers who had received emails from Discover. It turned out that I got them too. The emails came in two forms. One said that 10% would be awarded as a one time courtesy despite the purchase of a gift card. The others said “no gift cards allowed”.
Version 1:
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Access My Account Account number ending in XXXX |
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Important info about extra rewards with Apple Pay |
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Future gift card purchases will not earn extra rewards Dear Frequent Miler, We’re writing to let you know that your gift card purchase made with Apple Pay at Rite Aid Store – 1234 for $505.95 on September 17, 2015 will be rewarded 10% Cashback Bonus® as a one-time courtesy. Gift card purchases are not currently included in this promotion, and any future gift card purchases will not qualify. As a reminder, now through December 31, 2015, you’ll get an extra 10% Cashback Bonus® on up to $10,000 in purchases when you shop in stores and use your Discover card with Apple Pay, excluding gift card purchases. Sincerely, Discover Card Customer Service |
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Version 2:
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Stores listed
My emails from Discover included purchases from Walgreens and Rite Aid. Others have reported Staples as well. I’m curious… Did you receive emails about gift card purchases from any other stores?
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To date, I have not gotten a penny of 10% cash back. I called them and they said it may take 3 statements! My closing date is the 19th.
Adding another data point: My statement posted 11/25, and that morning I happened to also get another one of those emails about a gift card transaction that took place on 10/5. The Apple Pay bonus on my statement only included my non-gift-card Apple Pay transactions (i.e., the ones they didn’t email about) up to 10/5 (best that I can tell — the numbers seem to work out). So it seems like they’re slowly working their way through transactions to find what they think are gift card transactions, and only posting the Apply Pay bonus for reviewed transactions. And I do mean slowly — I got 2 emails on 11/13 about 2 gift card transactions I made on 9/29. So it took them like 12 days (11/13-11/25) to review their way through less than a week (9/29-10/5) of transactions. It may be 2016 before they get to reviewing November Apple Pay transactions!
Agreed. They’re running way behind. Even if I leave off the cash back off for my two “small” GC purchases, the totals are still NOWHERE near the amount that posted on my November 26th statement.
Nothing new here, but it appears that I DID received the extra 10% on my REGULAR purchases from 9/10-9/15. No gift cards in this batch. however, the entire NEXT month had no purchases, so I still have NOT received a statement, so it’s making it hard to see what the rewards are. But my quick math seems to add up.
Is Discover maybe checking if you bought a GC based on sales tax? My online transaction history has a “Complete Transaction details” tab, that I can pull down and it shows me “Sales Tax Amount”. They could easily write a program to check location, check sales tax, then calculate what should have been collected. Has anyone seen this discussed anywhere yet?
For some states food isn’t subject to sales tax, and you can buy gift cards at grocery stores that accept AP, so they would have no way of knowing between GC’s or food.
Does anyone have reports of merchant gift cards being flagged or is this mostly an issue with Visa/MC gift cards? Are merchant gift cards explicitly excluded from promotion as well? Even stores that only sell their own brand of gift card?
Yes, I bought merchant GC’s at Staples and not getting CB. They have no idea what you’re buying, they are flagging transactions over a certain amount.
Sub
do people still get 1% cash back on every purchase for GC payment though? then it would not hurt much since paypal MC is still <1% activation fee
Yes, they do
I fileld a complained with the government. (http://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/#credit-car)
I signed up for a new card now the therms are changed , don’t care if it helps, but in my opinion banks hates to deal with this overside. Learning thru pain.
won’t make an GC purchases before the situation is cleared….
JR
Interesting. On what date was the “no gift card” language added to the terms. If someone applied for the card based on the original terms BEFORE the new language was added, I suppose you could make a case for bait-and-switch. Discover really should be allowing bonus cash back for gift cards for anyone who applied for a new card before the terms changed.
Has anyone tried this at a grocery store with regular spend items? How are they going to detect if I buy $100 in groceries and $1000 in gift cards?
I have routinely been picking up $50 in groceries and $50 in random merchant gift cards and have not received any e-mail from them.
I won’t hit $10K this way, but I will bump up my total.
Were any of your purchases before 9/26? If not, you might still get the emails.
First one was 9/17 and was for $75 all gift cards. I got no notice whatsoever about this as far as I can tell.
Did you already receive the 10% on that purchase? I’m thinking maybe they are only going after people who have a large gc purchase (ie $500+). After that they might scrutinize all of the purchases and even notice small gc. Maybe you will get away with it since you had no large purchases.
I have not gotten 10% for anything, including purchases made on Sep 21. My statement closes in a week, so we will see. I had a 50/50 type transaction on the 27th, I think.
Sub
Well, with the confirmation that the GC exception rule is indeed being enforced, this deal went from being the “Deal of the Year” to the “Biggest Flop of the Year”. I won’t be getting anywhere near the cash back that I was hopping for. 🙁
Sub
I spoke to them regarding the receipt problem.they said the merchant is the one handing out cashback bonus,and they can send letter asking the merchant 4 receipts .Most importantly,discover does not have access to lv3 data,and so it appear apple is the one flag the transaction,as they said apple also pay out the cashback bonus.i already maxed out the limit by paying my phone bill and every one i know lol
subbing
S