Updates on 4x for Amex Gift Cards on Barclays Shopping Portal

The Frequent Miler posted that the Barclay’s shopping portal was giving 4x points/$ on purchases of American Express Gift Cards. This is in addition to the 2x points/$ that you would receive if you used your Barclays Arrival Credit Card.

I purchased $3,000 in gift cards and used the code SYNCGIFT to have the fees waived. Total including shipping was about $3,008. My points just posted on the shopping portal and it looks like they gave me points less the original gift card fees.

Amex BarclaysTo me this wasn’t such a big deal since I would have rather saved the $23 or so than earn the additional points.

He also mentioned how to liquidate your Amex Cards. One of the methods I tried was liquidating using Amazon Payments. You first must add your billing info to the Amex gift card and the only way to do this is to call the number on the back of your card.

After this is done, you can add the card to Amazon Payments to make a payment to a family or friend who also has registered on Amazon Payments. The trick is that when you add the card, it puts a $1 hold on the gift card so you can’t transfer the whole $500 to someone. I have had success transferring $498 and below. Update: Thanks to Zacon in the comments for a way to avoid the $1 hold. When you enter the expiration date in Amazon Payments website, put an incorrect one at first. Then after it is saved, go back and input the correct expiration date.

Another method I tried was purchasing Vanilla Reload Cards with the Amex gift card. I can verify that it will work if you have a cashier who is willing to take a gift card as a form of payment. You just have to give them the last 4 digits of the gift card to enter into the system for it to work. Just remember since the Vanilla reloads has a $3.95 fee, you only want to load $496.05 to equal exactly $500.Vanilla Reloads can then be loaded to your Bluebird card and you can liquidate your cash this way.

Hope these updates have helped!

 

29 Comments on "Updates on 4x for Amex Gift Cards on Barclays Shopping Portal"

  1. Does Amex ever drop the $1 hold? I also have an AMEX with $1 left and I figured I’d just wait a few days / weeks for it to fall off but it hasn’t yet. Do you know if it ever does?

    • Giddy for Points | February 8, 2014 at 4:11 pm | Reply

      Yes it should but don’t know how long it will take. Id hold on to it. Ill update post when it does get released.

  2. Thx for the heads up. Any word on whether this will ring up as a purchase for the new Citi Executive 100,000 card?

  3. There is a workaround on the $1 hold. When adding the card to AP, put the incorrect expiration date. This will prevent the $1 verification hold. Then, go back and correct the expiration date before sending the money.

  4. What about this from Travelsort.com: Earn 6X on AMEX gift card purchases with your Barclays Arrival card (4X via the Barclays Shopping Portal + 2X on all purchases). Since the Barclays Arrival already earns 2X on all purchases (2.2% cash back, when redeemed for travel), you could earn 6 Barclays Arrival “miles” per dollar. As an example, say you purchased a $3000 AMEX gift card. You’d earn 18,000 “miles” which equate to $180 off any travel expense, plus get a 10% miles rebate of 1800 back in your account, the equivalent of $18. That’s equal to 6.6% cash back. You can cash out AMEX gift cards using Amazon Payments

  5. Yes what about Kevin’s comment above? Why did you only receive 11,900 and not the full amount? It seems you didn’t get the 2x points from Barclays and just the 4x from the Amex gift cards

    • Giddy for Points | February 9, 2014 at 11:15 am | Reply

      The 11k points wasjust the portal points. I also got the 2x points..this doesnt show up in the shopping portal…it will show up when I log into the Barclays credit card site. so yes I did get 6x points in total

  6. Did your purchase procedure at AMEX(via Barclays shopping portal) request your social security number?
    Mine did. Not a huge deal, but I’ve never been asked for this info before(even tho AMEX surely knows it).

  7. Also, your Arrival card points posted one day after purchasing?

    • Giddy for Points | February 9, 2014 at 3:28 pm | Reply

      The points on the shopping portal took about 5 days to show up and the points from the Barclays card posted after the transaction hit my account.

  8. How long between purchase and posting of points? I made two purchases on Feb 3 and Feb 4 and I’ve still not received my Barclays portal points. I’m starting to get worried. I know I shopped correctly as I use to run tech support for a shopping portal so I got the steps down.

    • Giddy for Points | February 9, 2014 at 3:31 pm | Reply

      I also made the purchase on Feb 3rd and my shopping portal points posted yesterday. For whatever reason they may take a lil while longer but I hope they do post soon!

  9. Thanks GFP. Well done.

  10. Giddy for Points | February 9, 2014 at 3:36 pm | Reply

    Thank you kindly 🙂

  11. So it looks like it doesn’t invalidate the 4X portal bonus points by using the no-purchase fee code on your order. I was afraid I invalidated the bonus on my AMEX card order when I saw the message about an order not qualifying for the 4X bonus if you use “any codes or discounts not found on this site”. Not sure what that would apply to but apparently that doesn’t apply to the no-purchase code. Good news. I can now order some more without worrying about that. Thanks very much for the report.

  12. “I would have rather saved the $23 or so than earn the additional points.”
    Not sure what you mean by this. Aren’t you earning close to $180 worth of points (minus shipping charges) for that $3,000 spend or am I not doing the math right?

  13. *(Never mind about my confusion concerning your $23 comment. I re-read it and understand now what you were saying.)

  14. So made 6 purchases two weeks ago(2 for Amex Cards on different days, 4 for other places) yet only my 2 Staples purchases have been awarded.
    Does anyone know how to contact barclays shopping portal about missing purchases? Their contact us page just directs me to my Barclays credit card page. I’ve sent a message to credit card support but feel there has to be a way to contact the portal support.

  15. Do you believe I can get cash back after making a purchase using one of these cards? For example purchase a pack of gum at WalMart and get $100 cash back.

  16. I see where you can get four points per dollar again for AMEX gift cards through the Barclay portal. Do you know of any codes that will waive the fees that currently work?

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