Can You Get a Deal on a Gift Card?

Shopping at a wholesale store like Costco, BJ’s, or Sam’s Club, is one of the easiest ways to find discounted gift cards if you’re a member. You can take advantage of member-only discounts on a wide variety of gift cards that can extend up to 30 percent off the value of the gift card. This includes everything from restaurants and retail to travel and digital services.

Costco, for instance, is selling a set of four $25 gift cards to Smashburger for just $69.99 and BJ’s has a holiday promotion on $50 Barnes & Noble gift cards for $39.99. Sam’s Club has discounts available in stores and online, but the online discounts tend to be on the smaller side, though there’s a bundle of two $50 Fanatics gift cards for $79.98 available online right now. A rep from the company said the in-store promotions tend to see bigger discounts, so it may be worth venturing to a walk-in store to find the best deals.

Membership does come at a cost, however, which may offset the money you’d be able to save if you’re not planning to shop at any of these stores beyond this. Sam’s Club memberships start at $50 per year, and Costco starts at $60 annually. BJ’s basic membership lands in the middle at $55, but this retailer also offers a free one-day trial membership. It may allow you to take advantage of gift card prices but is only available for online shopping, not in-store shopping, so your options may be limited.

You can find gift cards at almost any major retailer these days as well, and some of them may have special promotions around the holidays. Best Buy, for instance, is running a promotion right now that gives shoppers a $25 Best Buy e-gift card when they purchase a $250 Delta gift card, or a $15 Best Buy gift card with the purchase of a $100 Hotels.com gift card. Over at Target, you’ll find a similar promotion: You can get a $10 Target gift card if you buy $100 worth of Apple gift cards.

Best Buy, like most major retailers, also sells gift cards for other businesses, but this retailer actually has a decent selection of discounts. For instance, you can get a digital $100 Regal Cinemas gift card for just $80 or a $50 digital Disney gift card for $45.

Sites like Groupon and LivingSocial can be great resources to find discounted gift cards as well. Options tend to be more limited, but you may find something unique or hyperlocal. If you’re shopping for someone far away, enter their location to see if any small businesses in their area have special offers. This can lead you to a gift you might never have thought of otherwise. When I plugged in my own ZIP code, for example, I found a gift card for a local hair salon at 20 percent off and a wine cellar gift card that was 46 percent off.

Tread carefully with gift card resale sites that buy and sell unused gift cards for less than the value of the cards themselves. This may sound great in theory, but the risks often outweigh the potential savings. 

There are countless sites out there that buy people’s unused gift cards and resell them at a discount.  If you have any unused gift cards or digital gift card codes you know you’ll never use, you can sell them to get some of the value back in cash. The cards are then made available to buy at a discount.

“My advice to consumers is to only buy discount gift cards from sites that are well-established in the space, offer a money-back guarantee, and have customer service available if there is an issue,” says Shelley Hunter, founder of Gift Card Girlfriend, a website where you can find insights and tips on the gift card industry. CardCash.com and Raise.com currently meet those criteria, Hunter says.

The problem comes when you buy a secondhand gift card only to find out it carries no value when you try to use it. This is because scammers often sell gift cards on these sites but quickly spend the balance after the value has been confirmed. Or they’ll save the information and once the new buyer activates a card, they’ll spend the total value before the buyer can. If that happens, you may be able to get your money back or you might not, depending on the site’s policies. But even if you’re able to get your money back, it’s still a hassle. 

“When buying discounted gift cards from the reseller market, consumers should use the cards immediately, lessening the opportunity for the original seller to use the value after the card has been transferred to the new owner,” Hunter says. “Reputable gift card resellers have security processes in place to prevent this from happening, plus money-back guarantees to compensate buyers if it does.”

Hunter recommends researching any resale site before buying by clicking around on the site and looking for egregious errors like typos, missing pages, and a lack of customer service contact information. You can also read customer reviews on sites like Google and TrustPilot to get a sense of whether other shoppers have encountered problems with a reseller.