Goodbye to Free Visa Gift Card Shipping with Gift Card Mall
Gift Card Mall has removed free shipping via US Mail for Visa gift cards from their site’s shipping options. Instead, buyers will be charged $1.99 shipping for each Visa gift card purchased. Previously, purchases of Visa gift cards under a $2,000 total included free shipping. While losing the free shipping option is bad news, there is a bright side.
RELATED: Why Simon Mall Selling Visa Gift Cards Online Doesn’t Impress Me Much
Alternative Visa Gift Card Shipping Options
All other shipping options with Gift Card Mall appear to remain unchanged. For instance, the next cheapest shipment option, USPS trackable mail, still costs $10.95. The more expensive UPS Ground, Priority, and Express options are still available, as well.
My Initial Take
Removing free shipping will primarily affect buyers who previously purchased four or less Visa Gift Cards totaling less than $2,000 per order. There’s no getting around the fact that what was once free is now an expense for low-volume buyers.
For those of us who were or are buying more than four $500 Visa gift cards at a time, this doesn’t really change anything. We were previously paying at least $10.95 for shipping, and we will continue to do so.
There Were Costs to Free Shipping
In the past, completing low volume Visa gift card orders would save a bit of money while avoiding shipping fees, but it also created other costs and problems. In the past, it was possible to make multiple small orders to avoid shipping fees, but this would result in more time spent organizing, ordering, and anxiously waiting for shipments to arrive. Shipments would go missing, resulting in extended communications with Gift Card Mall for replacement cards. Envelopes would arrive partially open. Delivery times seemed random and unnecesarily long. Shipments showed up out of order.
A Better Way
Simply paying $10.95 for USPS trackable shipping has made things easier for me (and I bet many of you). I concentrate on high volume Gift Card Mall orders while paying this $10.95 fee. I have less orders, faster shipping, more predictable schedules, and more secure packages arriving. Now, I happily pay this $10.95 charge, as it has greatly simplified this part of the hobby.
For previous low volume buyers, I recommend paying this $10.95 shipping fee for better service. If you can absorb buying a few more cards at a time, paying for this service is easily justifiable rather than the $1.99 per card for the basic, worrisome shipping method.
Minimize Visa Gift Card Shipping Costs with Portal Bonuses
As most or all of you know, ensure to minimize your Gift Card Mall costs by tracking through a portal to their site. My favorite is the Rakuten Membership Rewards portal, but many of you have other options you prefer. As I recently described, I’m able to greatly decrease my costs simply through portal rewards.
Wrapping Up
Losing free shipping isn’t fun, but it’s not a huge hit. If anything, I think Gift Card Mall removing free shipping will just encourage more efficiency for many in this hobby. What do you think of the change? Does it affect your routine?
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is the old king of travel rewards cards. Right now
bonus_miles_full
Learn more about this card and its features!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Are you buying visa gift cards, and how’s it profitable buying from gift card mall. Aren’t you earning 1 point per dollar and paying ~$6 fee for the gift card? What am I missing here please?
There are shopping portals out there where you will earn cash back for the purchase which offsets a lot of the cost and they are not $6 per card. There are cards out there that earn 2X on everything as well plus you have welcome offers, spending offers etc. to consider.
The OP is really wrong.
It does not make sense to order 10 or 20 GCs with a single order. Then the credit card banks will shut you down. It is better to break the order into small orders.
AJ,
Everyone’s experience is different. From my perspective, there is no absolute right or wrong here. I’ve had no issues with larger orders. But I understand and applaud buyers who have previously gotten great value out of free shipping, as well. Thanks for reading!
[…] Goodbye to Free Visa Gift Card Shipping with Gift Card Mall by Miles to Memories. […]
What would you suggest is the best card to use at GCM?
David,
This is a big, but valid, question. There is no one answer. Reflect on your travel/rewards goals and pick the card that provides you the most benefit. For what it’s worth, Gift Card Mall generally doesn’t provide any bonus category spend opportunities, so ensure to factor that into your considerations. Thanks for reading!
Maybe I’m just lucky, ordered thousands, probably hundreds of thousands worth of visa from gcm, always broke into <$2k orders, never had an incident. Some orders took a long time to arrive, but nonetheless, I never had to file a claim. Sad to see it gone, guess all good party comes to an end one way or another.
Paul,
Wow, that’s a nice run you had! Thanks for reading.
I was just like Paul. So what max quantity can or should be ordered with the 10.95 shipping fee?
John,
I believe the maximum order amount is around $10k while maintaining the same $10.95 shipping fee. Thanks for reading!
Did you reach out to Gift Card Mall to find out why? If it’s permanent? Etc? any type of reporting?
Adam,
The Gift Card Mall website simply doesn’t provide a free shipping option during checkout. It’s now $1.99 per card for what was previously free. I’d be surprised if this wasn’t permanent. For what it’s worth, Giftcards.com has had a $1.99 per card minimum shipping fee for some time now.