A Kroger Gift Card Play Appears Dead
For a variety of reasons, I’ve enjoyed buying third party gift cards with store gift cards over the years. Stacking promos and paying with gift cards has made many of those deals a bit sweeter. My favorite angles involved paying with an Amazon, Target, Sam’s Club, Walmart, or Kroger gift card. Those first four have died, and it now appears the last one has, as well.
Discovery
Over the past couple days, I tried buying third party gift cards with Kroger gift cards at three locations – two regular Krogers and one Marketplace. After swiping my payment card on each occasion, I received the “Help Is On The Way” screen. Initially, I didn’t think it was a big deal, figuring a software update may require the Kroger employee to authorize the purchase.
I was wrong. Each attendant over the couple days gained access to remove the apparent error. When it kept happening on additional attempts, the attendant moved my transaction to their register. But there was no luck there, either. Here’s a screenshot from one of those attempts:
On each occasion, the Kroger self checkout attendant seemed surprised by the error. Attempts at customer service were also fruitless. The reps passed me off to managers whose common response was that the system no longer allows buying gift cards with Kroger gift cards. I shared how I’d been doing this for years, including in the last week or so. Naturally, the change is disappointing. We collectively shrugged, and I went on my way.
Why This Matters
Historically, I’ve enjoyed stacking credit card-linked offers to buy discounted Kroger gift cards and subsequently using them to purchase groceries and merchant gift cards. By doing so, I’ve realized the savings from the card-linked offer beyond its expiration. Also, I could stack those savings while optimally earning fuel points based on my preferred schedule and gas needs. Taking everything into account, I’d effectively end up saving well over 20% or more on related transactions.
With this change, maximizing fuel point savings with gift card purchases gets a bit trickier. Fuel point earnings won’t always line up with other savings angles such as card-linked offers. At best, I’m in for a bit more work. At worst, I may lose out on certain stacked savings.
Kroger Gift Card – Conclusion
Taking a step back, this is a loss, albeit not a huge one. And I’d love to be proven wrong about the death of this play – perhaps it’s a regional change, for instance. Regardless, I can still maximize savings through card-linked offers by buying Kroger gift cards. But those gift cards will now only be useful for – gasp – groceries, other merch, and gas at Kroger. That’ll work for us, as Kroger is where we do the vast majority of our grocery shopping, anyway. But in terms of our main options for buying third party gift cards with store gift cards, Kroger’s the latest casualty.
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We have no Kroger here in S Fla. But I can tell you any sort of mass gift card buying is under scrutiny for fraud of all kinds. I guess you were able to double dip getting grocery credits for the Kroger card than stacking the others. I dont think Publix allows that and I think most retailers now prevent that sort of buying.
robertw,
Maybe you’re talking about something else, but I didn’t earn fuel points buying Kroger gift cards.
I had a similar experience in Atlanta. I was trying to use a Kroger gift card purchased from AARP in March. I had a Chase offer on a Freedom card and a specific purchase amount because I wanted to hit for exactly 1000 fuel points. I had 2 gift cards and some food that exceeded the value of the Kroger/AARP gift card. The cashier cleared the error on at the self-checkout, and a credit was applied to my credit card equal to the gift card purchases. It wasn’t clear what was happening until I got home and checked all my accounts. Not sure if it makes any difference, but one of the gift cards was for Amazon, and it was after Kroger limited the fuel points earning to 2x
This prohibition has spread to many other stores. No gift card purchase is allowed if it is paid for with a gift card. Safeway, Lowe’s, Best Buy, etc.