DEAD DEAL! A look back on the Target $400 Visa GC for $399

Introduction

I was a little hesitant to write this post and even now, I’m hesitant to post, but I’m doing it because a) the person who found the deal gave me the okay to write it, b) it’s DEAD and has near zero probability to come back to life and most importantly, c) to show you guys why it’s valuable to think outside of the box and try, try, try!

Background

Some time earlier this year, Target started to sell their $400 VGC on their site for $406.  This was definitely more expensive than $500 for $5 at a drugstore, so initally it wasn’t very appealing…  however… what if they took Target egc (that you got at a discount or with 5X Ink) to pay for it?  Or what if portals paid ou on the purchase?  So the first thing we tried was of course using a Target egc to buy the VGC.  The order would go through, but eventually it got cancelled.  That nixed that idea.  Since the order was cancelled, there would be no portal pay out.  Plus, Target usually has really low portal rates, so even if it did pay out, it probably wouldn’t have been worth it.  So that’s when we sorta gave up on this route.

The lightning bolt

At the end of July, my unicorn hunter (who shall still remain nameless) stumbled onto this post/picture on Reddit:

 

Search was on!

He tried to ask the op, but as you can imagine, the op wasn’t going to give any clues.  In fact, he probably should have never posted it at all since this was like throwing meat to a hungry pack of wolves.  I don’t know if the op was a newbie or if he was just showing his e-penis, but I would NOT have done it.  Anyway, that’s when we tried to figure out how to get a $7 coupon via Google.  It took a while, and when I say ‘while,’ I really mean an hour or so.  We eventually found out that the coupon came from the Entertainment Book.  So some people bought a subscription to it, but we never got around to actually trying it since we found this (which is still active btw):

 

BOOM!

And sure enough, we tried it and IT WORKED!  But of course we waited a day or two to see if they would actually ship it and what do you know, IT SHPPED!  You were able to buy the $400 VGC for $399!!!.  Of course we then tested using AGC and what do you know, IT WORKED TOO!  So now we could liquidate AGC and get paid $1 per $400 card!  NUTS!  The only problem was that Target kept going OOS on these items, so that was our bottleneck.  Plus, we wanted to gradually work our way up.  While I started out with an order a day, I eventually ramped up to 2-3 a day and then eventually 3-5 orders per day.  They worked with the $200 cards too, which was a better bang for your buck since the $7 coupon was a fixed amount.  So when the $400 was OOS, we bought the $200 cards and vice-versa.  The coupon did NOT work for the $100 since I think the $100 was coded correctly as a gift card, which is a coupon exclusion.

Liquidation

We then put these cards through the gift card matrix.  We knew they would work at Target, but would they work at Walmart?  Or how about on the phone with Citi?    Well, I’m not going to give you those answers; you can figure it out for yourself.

Gravy Train Stops

So how long did this last?  Surely we all knew this wasn’t going to last forever, so you may as well go hard or go home, right?  Well, I can tell you that it lasted for about a month before they fixed this ‘glitch.’  I think they eventually recoded the $200 and $400 as to be ‘gift cards’ since the coupon never worked on the $100 cards.  So, of course that didn’t stop us from trying other tricks.  We tried maybe adding a $70 item to the order and removing it from our cart.  No bueno.  I tried to create a wedding registry and putting the $400 cards on my registry since that’s what I’d want anyone to buy for my wedding (plus, Target was sending out 10% wedding registry coupons.)  Unfortunately, this didn’t work either.  Although looking back, I bet if we had tried this earlier, it would have worked since the VGC were not ‘gift cards’ at the time.  Imagine getting 10% off a VGC.  Now we’ll never know (unless someone actually did this, and if they did, I applaud your ingenuity.)

Conclusion

So how did I do?  I converted $17,200 worth of AGC to VGC.  But this isn’t meant to be a brag and moan post.  This is to explain how sometimes you need to research what’s out there and try new things and you just might get lucky.  Let’s recap on things we learned:

• Who knew Simply Best Coupons has a $7 off $70 coupon?  Certainly I didn’t.  So let’s look at what other random coupons there are floating out there.
• Who knew the coupon would actually work on VGC right?  However, I’m sure if TCB had a $7 off coupon, everyone would have tried it already.  So, really, the AHA moment was finding the $7 coupon.
• Who knew Target would accept AGC so easily?  Some merchants don’t like AGC.  By the way, if we didn’t have AGC, oh guess what, they were 3X on ATT More, so that was basically free 3X TYP.  Or if you didn’t have ATT, then you could have easily used SPG or a 3% card.

So there you go.  This reminds me of the TV show, Survivor, which I still love.  You guys remember the year Russell played and found all the idols before he was given any clues?  It’s kind of like that.  You can either be given rice and eat rice and coconuts all day and sleeping and waiting for the challenges.  OR you could go searching around for the hidden immunity idol and find your own deals and connecting the dots for yourself!  Are there more deals like this out there?  I’m sure there are!  Do I know about them?  Maybe.  Would I blog about them?  NOPE!  Well maybe until it’s dead and then maybe there’s a lesson or two to be learned.