Amazon brings back the Albertsons gift card, after it was removed a number of months ago. The gift card is available in any denomination from $25 to $100. It’s currently only available from Amazon as an e-gift card.
Direct Link to Albertsons e-gift cards from Amazon.com (contains our affiliate link)
Albertsons Companies gift cards can also be redeemed in the entire family of stores: Albertsons, Safeway, Randalls, Tom Thumb, Pavilions, Vons, Carrs, Shaw’s, Star Markets, Jewel-Osco, Acme Markets, Lucky, Haggen, Andronico’s, Kings, and Balducci’s.
A lot of people like buying grocery gift cards with the Amazon Shop Points deals or other Amazon promotions as an easy way of ‘cashing out’ those deals. Many consider grocery credit nearly as good as cash.
Hat tip to lilribbit
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Trying my long shot to see if I can get any response here.
Can anyone confirm if I can use the albertsons e gift card from amazon to purchase gift cards (gas, amazon, other merchants) in safeway?
@guest_1878024 Jewel-Osco (affiliate) does not allow purchasing gift cards with a gift card (physical or electronic).
Thanks for your quick reply. I want to use the reward points offer on amazon. This gift card is the closest option I could use, so was thinking if I can flip this card for other gift cards available in safeway stores.
I thought that Amazon killed that route or is still working for some of the rewards points offers?
I was able to buy an Albertsons gc using a Discover promo fairly recently.
It is working on a specific set of cards
I can no longer buy Albertsons GC on Amazon using Amazon GC balance. This appears to be new. Can anyone do it?
@guest_1705972 https://www.doctorofcredit.com/amazon-no-longer-allows-paying-for-third-party-giftcards-with-amazon-giftcard-balance/
Super easy to use when you print it out. eGift card has QR code, so just scan QR code using barcode scanner when you check out. @ Jewel osco.
Still couldn't use it at Self Checkout. It just says invalid barcode when you try to use it.
This would be nice if Acme didn't have worst prices of just about any supermarket.
I used to get Whole Foods gift cards from Amazon, but they've been unavailable for months. For a while I was still able to get the physical ones but now those are gone, too. Anyone know what happened and if they will bring them back? Strange that they're selling Safeway and other grocery stores' gift cards but not those for their own subsidiary, Whole Foods.
There was a discussion on that earlier this year. https://www.doctorofcredit.com/whole-foods-gift-cards-no-longer-available-on-amazon/
Can someone please explain how to maximize this "oppurtunity"? I am having trouble reading between the lines the importance of Albertsons G.C., Please.
For some, it's the ability to buy Amazon GC at 10-20% discount and turning them into Albertson GC for a larger grocery discount. For others, it's because they continually get the Discover/Amex/Chase discounts on Amazon and buy these.
@guest_1633139 I just tried to use Amazon GC balance to purchase Albertson GC and got an error message "Your gift card balance can’t be applied to orders that contain certain items per Amazon Gift Card Terms and Conditions." "Your gift card balance can’t be applied to orders that contain Amazon.com or Visa or Mastercard gift cards, or collectible coins.". Is this a new change?
No longer allowed. There is a new thread here.
thank you Celia, i thought it was something helpful w. MS
there is something but we can't tell
score, Kings supermarket near me
It's 2023 Albertsons, update your SCO to accept eGCs already.
If the loomingKroger acquisition fails, perhaps they'll take your wise advice.
You can load the code of a Safeway eGiftcard onto an old Safeway physical Giftcard using a magstrip read/writer encoder. You can get these from Amazon for around $90 or so. Then you buy a VGC at Safeway at self-check. Reps frown upon you buying a VGC with a Safeway GC, but if you get lucky and the rep walks away after checking your ID against your credit card, swipe the Safeway GC for partial/full payment. You can pay the rest with your credit card. Then buy an MO with the VGC and the cycle is complete. If this works you can liquidate your Amazon gift card balance at a loss of only 1.4%.
@guest_1632979 Can I use this to convert virtual vgc to a physical vgc?
Maybe. Physical VGCs have two CVVs: one printed, one encoded in the mag stripe. With an eVGC you could try using the printed CVV for the mag stripe along with the CC number and the expiration date. I believe I tried this once before and it didn't work for me.
The Safeway physical gift cards have the encrypted pin block on both track 1 and track 2 of the magstripe. Unless you have the encryption key used to encrypt the pin, you can't turn the known pin into the encrypted value. Am I missing something here?
That's my understanding. I think it also encodes some other information like the type of card and other information that isn't available on an eGift card.
Interestingly, upon checking, the only thing that's different from each physical card to another is a 3 digit code along with the card number. I'd venture to agree with @guest_1640943 that this is the CVV that's encoded in the magstripe. How would one then find what that CVV is if you only have the EGC?
Converting egift cards into physical ones would be a piece of cake if we could figure out the corresponding CVV for the egift card. @guest_1632979 , I'd appreciate any thoughts you might be able to offer here.
It could also be a checksum considering the data is from mag tracks.
Either that, or it's the pin in an encrypted form. I haven't tried to use a decoder for either track to see what should appear at the place of the variable 3-digits. If it's a checksum, would there be a way for calculating that?
Yeah, I think they even frown upon the eGC on any purchase. The first reaction I usually get is "what's this?", then they may try to scan it and see if it does anything, or call a manager over because they never seen a gift card printed on a piece of paper before and it looks sketchy.
Have you already done it before? When I was looking at the track data on the physical gift cards, it seems like they contained a bit more information than what's printed on the card itself. Not sure if that info matters or whatever, but never tried replacing the number on there and see what happens.
Also, if you ask nicely, you can convert the eGCs into a physical GC by using the eGC to purchase the physical GC. Most cashiers will refuse to do this, but a manager at the service desk will probably let you do it just fine since they know eGCs are a pain in the rear to use.
I had some mixed results. Sometimes the cashier doesn't care at all, and sometimes you notice that they meant to stop you, but don't care enough to correct you when you started swiping, but I also had Cashiers caring way too much and call a Manager to reverse the TX.
I feel like buying a magstrip encoder on Amazon puts you on an FBI watch list though
Used Chase UR 40% promotion on this: 1 UR point + $59.99 for $100 gift card. Thanks!
I did that for $100s of free groceries until recently when I was no longer for the UR point (or Discover, or MR point) promos. I used to be eligible for all; now I am eligible for none.