Update: At 4:30 PM today, Yazing confirmed they are in fact still paying out 2% cash back at GiftCards.com, despite their listing showing only 1.5%.
Update: It seems Yazing dropped the payout prematurely. As of 3:50 PM, they’re only offering 1.5% cash back at GiftCards.com. The next best alternative is iConsumer, which is once again offering 1.6% cash back on GiftCards.com orders.
I’ve had a pretty busy week in terms of manufactured spending. So much so, that I haven’t had a chance to write about it. Aside from my regular mall/Walmart runs, I’ve been ordering gift cards online through GiftCards.com.
As some of you may recall, a few weeks ago iConsumer was offering 1.6% cash back on Visa gift card purchased from GiftCards.com. That was discontinued, but a quick search on Cashback Monitor turned up another cash back portal paying out on GiftCards.com. This one offering 2% cash back.
This cash back portal, Yazing, is pretty new. In fact, they don’t even have a dashboard showing your tracking and cash back activity. The various email confirmations I received stated that this feature would be on its way.
I placed one order to test it out, then received a message from reader Spencer is saying he’d used it as well, reassuring me somewhat by saying the founder (Adam Viener) has worked with other cash back portals in the past.
He also brought the company’s referral system to my attention. It’s not your typical refer, sign-up, and earn bonus setup. Rather, every registered member gets a customized link for each merchant that they can share with others to earn commission.
You can find this link by logging into your Yazing account and following these steps:
- Hover over your name (upper right side) and click “shop and share.”
- Search for the merchant you want to refer people to.
- Select the green button titled “copy my link”
- Share with your friends
The down side of someone using your referral link is that they will not earn cash back on the transaction – only you will. So if you share your Giftcards.com link with your friend and he/she uses it to make a purchase, only you will earn the cash back.
Why bother using this referral system if it only benefits the person whose link is being used? Because if you’re like me and constantly purchase gift cards on behalf of family members, this is one less shopping portal account you have to set up.
For example, the other day I gave my link to my brother and had him order $2,000 worth of Visa gift cards for himself using his Barclay Arrival Plus card. I’m going to be the one liquidating the gift cards (and probably redeeming the miles), so it doesn’t matter whether I earn the 2% cash back or he does. It’s all going into the same point pool.
It does make it easy for me because I don’t have to sign him up for an account (or depend on him to do it). I could just use my shopping portal account for all orders, but I feel like after a while it might look suspicious, so I always set up separate accounts.
In any case, I’ve successfully placed two orders on Giftcards.com using Yazing and received confirmations that they went through. At one point, Spencer and I swapped referral links (before we understood how it worked). So it’s possible one of those confirmation emails came from an order he placed with my link.
Anyway, I’ve got my tracking confirmations from Yazing and hope there are no issues with the payout. It takes 30-90 days for Yazing members to get their cash back, which is paid out via PayPal. So make sure your Yazing email matches your PayPal account email.
If something goes wrong and the amount due is never paid out, at 2% cash back, I figure it’s still worth it. It can wipe out all of the purchase fees and leave me with a stash of free miles. If not, at least I didn’t invest too much cash and any extra fees paid were worth the convenience.
The other day I got turned away at my favorite Walmart store because I was using a gift card to buy a money order. The only way to combat this (other than letting Walmart’s high employee turnover work its magic), is to get gift cards with my name on them. Visa gift cards purchased from Giftcards.com solve that problem for me.
It’s worth noting that starting tomorrow, Yazing’s payout on Giftcards.com orders is dropping from 2% to 1.5%. So if you’re going to get in on this, you might want to do so today.
Giftcards.com limits Visa gift card purchases to $2,000. The way I approach orders is to request three cards for $500 and one for $450. With card and shipping fees, the total comes to $1,985.25. Which means I’m paying $35.25 in fees and earning $39.71 in cash back through Yazing.
This eliminates the card and shipping fees, leaves me with a $1.66 profit after money order fees are factored in. Plus a minimum of 1,985 free airline miles.
These are pretty small numbers, but across multiple orders you’ll really start to see significant savings. With the reduced payout of 1.5% cash back, you still off-set the majority of the card and shipping fees. (The purchase limit for GiftCards.com Visas has been increased to $2,500).
Have you used Yazing before? Please share your experience in the comment section.
The rate is 1.5% already 🙁
I just noticed it. Really sucks that they dropped it a day early.
Ariana,
any chance you can contact the founder Adam asking if he would honor the 2%?
Yep, they tweeted at me earlier and said all of today’s orders would earn 2% (even though the wording on the site changed).
These are bancorp gcs? Aren’t they the ones that make vanillas?
They are Bancorp cards, but the PIN works for buying MO’s at WM.
got it. thank you.
1 more question, are you ever worried about this purchase showing up as giftcards.com on your statement?
Not really. I don’t plan on placing more than 2-3 orders per card in a month (assuming there’s a cash back offer), so along with some regular spending I’m hoping it’s not a problem.
placed my order at 2k with the additional charges of $30 or so, but it went through. Now I just noticed that I used your link and now YOU get my cashback. I should’ve expected that.
Did you sign up first? Because if you’re logged in, it doesn’t matter whose link you’re using – you earn the cash back. If you didn’t register, simply call GiftCards.com and cancel the order.
Yazing had sent an e-mail earlier today telling that the cashback would drop to 1.5% tomorrow. E-mail also said that they have changed it on the website already but they will pay full 2% for all orders placed today.
@takhlio could you post that email some how?
Here it is.
“GiftCards.com Rate Change
Today is the last day for 2% commission
We have been notified by GiftCards.com that the commission rate will change from 2% to 1.5% on 2/26/2016.
We have updated the rate on Yazing, but want to let you know that our best guess is that the rate will switch over at 12am PST. Regardless, we will continue to pass through 100% of the commissions paid by GiftCards.com to you for your purchases and recommendations.
Thanks for supporting Yazing!
Adam
I also made a purchase yesterday and here is the cashback confirmation e-mail.
“Congratulations! You earned $50.00 from GiftCards.com!
Although we are still in the process of building our backend reporting system, rest assured we are keeping track of all the transactions and will pay out the funds directly to your email address on file via PayPal as soon as we have received payment from them. Typically within 30-60 days.
Thanks for using Yazing and congratulations on your earnings!
Adam
Interesting wording if you read Yazing’s terms and conditions page (http://yazing.com/display/terms):
“Yazing reserves the right to withold payments to any member who is fradulatnly using the platform, abusing or gaming the platform, or suspected of manufactured spending. Should you be rewarded for merchandise that is subsequently returnd or charged back, you will be billed for and are legally oblighed to return those rewards.”
Don’t know if they would enforce this but it’s interesting nonetheless that they’d specifically call out manufactured spending in their terms.
That’s very strange. I don’t know how they’d know if we were manufactured spending or not. I’ll see if I can find out more.
I placed an order last night got an email from Adam cash back is $39.56 (2%) On an order for $1950 wish I would have seen this earlier made a large purchase at Simon mall in the morning.
Thank you Ariana for posting this
Sure thing! Glad you got to take advantage of it. By the way, iConsumer is offering 1.6% cash back again.
Just curious why you say giftcards.com limits orders to $2000. I’ve been able to order $2000 worth and w/ shipping in fees it comes out to about $2035. I am not able to order more than $2500 including shipping/fees in a single order.
It’s weird – a while back when I’d try to order four $500 cards, I’d get a message saying the limit is $2k and I can’t proceed to checkout. It wasn’t until I altered the amount so that it came to under $2k before fees and shipping that it allowed me to proceed. I just placed another order for $2k worth of cards and that one went through without problems.
Glad it works now.
Are all of the visa gift cards purchased through one of these sites Bancorp and will automatically go through as debit?
Yes, they’re issued by Bancorp and after setting a PIN, you can use it as debit.
I see your point to let family members use the referral link but you keep collecting those cash back. For me, that’s easier to maintain one set of Yazing and PayPal accounts and let my family members use their own CC to purchase VGCs at GiftCards.com through my Twitter or Facebook referral links. Can those same referral links be recycled by other family members or friends?
Chris – Any non-yazing member who comes through any of your referral links will earn you cash back on their transactions. We encourage our members to share their links far and wide, as the average consumer is just looking for a good coupon code or deal and often doesn’t realize that a commission is paid to someone on each purchase. It might as well be you right?