Safeway/Albertsons/Vons Mastercard gift card deal is back - make money!

Safeway/Albertsons/Vons has brought back their popular Just For U deal for discounted Mastercard gift cards.  There are currently two offers:


The $50 gift cards come with a $4.95 purchasing fee and the $100 gift cards come with a $5.95 purchasing fee.  So you'll be up 10 cents for buying two $50 gift cards and up $3.10 for buying two $100 gift cards.


Which credit card to use?

Starting April 1, 2020, the Chase Freedom will be earning 5X on all grocery store purchases, so that would be the best card to use towards these gift cards.  As an alternative, the Amex Gold card offers 4X on all grocery store purchases.

Some Safeways accept gift cards as a form of payment towards other 3rd party gift cards, but YMMV.  As Safeway gift cards can be purchased online on Amazon.com and on staples.com, you could use a card that gets 5X on office supply purchases like the Chase Ink Cash and earn 5X on Safeway gift cards which may be able to be used towards the Mastercard gift cards.  In my experience, physical plastic gift cards are usually accepted as a form of payment towards 3rd party gift cards, but not necessarily the eGift cards that you need to print out.


Ways to liquidate MasterCard gift cards

The best ways to liquidate these MasterCard gift cards would be through purchases that you normally wouldn't earn bonus cashback on.  For example, if you already earn 4X on grocery store purchases with the Amex Gold card, then it wouldn't make much sense to use these cards at supermarkets.  A good way for many would be via Amazon debit card reloads, which earn an additional 2% bonus towards your Amazon gift card balance.  Since these Mastercard gift cards count as debit card purchases, a $100 gift card would end up contributing $102 to your Amazon gift card balance.  Another way may be to buy Costco Shop Cards online.  Whereas Costco only accepts Visa cards in store, their accept all major credit cards except for Amex online.


Quick thoughts

It's great to see this deal return once again.  Remember to first add the coupons to either your Just For You online account or through the Safeway app.  These offers expire on April 11, 2020, which should get you enough time to hit up the grocery store with your Chase Freedom card.


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