More Gift card deals for y'all at BIG W.
Hopefully, we've all got some experience with the Pocket Money gift cards after ALDI.
Note: the Pocket Money cards there is a limit of ten cards per Everyday Rewards member.
Enjoy!
It's not mentioned but a safe assumption would be that the purchase fee still applies.
A loss on low denominations then.
Save a $1.55 on a $75 card, not really a bargain. Plus when I got them at ALDI their SMS system limited to 4 per customer, you get blocked from loading more.
Are fees waived this time?
Were there any bad experiences with Pocket Money at Aldi?
Definitely.
It looks like you probably have not been following the associated deal post for the Pocket Money gift card deal at ALDI, so here is a quick crash course of the gift card scheme (as it will help explain some of my gripes):
MicroGifts operates the Digital Cash gift card scheme. The Digital Cash gift card is a virtual prepaid Mastercard gift card that you can only access through the MicroGifts app. When you sign up for a MicroGifts account, you will be assigned a Digital Cash gift card.
To add balance to a Digital Cash gift card, you need to redeem a Pocket Money gift card (including the one in this deal) and add it to your MicroGifts account. There is no physical gift card in the Pocket Money gift card packaging; instead, there is a QR code you scan, then you fill in some details and then have the activation link (and for new account holders only, an access code) sent to you via SMS (or email, but usually via SMS).
You can redeem multiple Pocket Money gift cards onto your MicroGifts account. When you do that, the balance from each Pocket Money gift card is transferred (i.e. consolidated) to the same Digital Cash gift card. The redemption limit appears to be 5 gift cards per MicroGifts account per day and $999 available balance on the Digital Cash gift card at any one time.
In terms of bad experiences:
The biggest issue so far has been the MicroGifts’ SMS system not always sending out the activation link once you redeem a Pocket Money gift card, even though the activation form says it has been sent. When I spoke to a MicroGifts support agent late yesterday, they mentioned the number of SMS requests they saw so far in that day was more than the number of SMS requests they have received in the previous year. That sounds like to me the existing method of redeeming and activating a gift card for existing MicroGifts account holders is not fit for purpose. You can call up support and ask them to resend the SMS with the activation link, but I did that and the resent SMS never actually turned up!
The second biggest issue has been that the support system appears to be poorly designed (and this is not a criticism of any of the support agents, because in my experience they have been as helpful as they can be). For some reason, if you are on hold on the phone for longer than approximately a minute, their phone system will play a message saying no one is available to help and you should call back later, and then it will abruptly hang up! You should get a follow-up phone call from a support agent when they eventually work their way through the backlog of missed calls to you, but the message will not tell you this will happen…
Great thanks @WookieMonster. The above summary would be helpful for future references.
I guess they were OzBargained from the Aldi deal?
I’d say so!
thanks for detail information.
but how do you use the card if there is no physical card? i need to pay ATO which requires card number, CVV etc. can we pay this card to ATO & Centrelink or buy another woolworths gift card using budgetdirect rewards or similar?
how do you use the card if there is no physical card?
The MicroGifts app has a section where you can access the card details for your virtual prepaid Mastercard gift card (i.e. card number, expiry date, CVC2).
Alternatively, you can add the virtual prepaid Mastercard gift card to Samsung Wallet (manually), Apple Pay or Google Wallet.
can we pay this card to ATO & Centrelink or buy another woolworths gift card using budgetdirect rewards or similar?
Someone confirmed yesterday that they were able to payments to the ATO.
I am not sure about Centrelink.
I am also not sure about Budget Direct Rewards, because I cannot tell whether that gift card portal will accept a prepaid Mastercard gift card as a payment method.
@WookieMonster: Thanks again. Hope there is no surcharge or activation fees on bigw variable load cards similar to Aldi.. !
@SydBoy: Considering the BIG W catalogue says nothing about waiving the $5.95 purchase fee, it looks like it is 10% off the full purchase price of the gift card.
For example, if you load $75 onto a gift card, you will pay $72.86 for it after the 10% discount is applied, which means an effective discount of 2.86%…
@WookieMonster: makes the Aldi deal much better assuming BigW won't be waiving fee….
waiting for more details which will come as we get closer to the deal go live…
@WookieMonster: You could argue it either way. The terms for the offer in the catalogue do not say that there is an activation fee, which is normally stipulated when coles/woolies run their mastercard/visa/westfield gift card promotions.
Until wednesday when people test it out, or we get confirmation from big w prior, we are all guessing.
@loveyou3000: The reasons I am assuming there will be a purchase fee charged are:
The packaging mentions a $5.95 purchase fee.
There have been gift card deals in the past where the BIG W catalogue forgets to mention a purchase fee, yet the checkout still charged you for one (e.g. in April 2022 and December 2022). And yes, for both these deals, I bought the relevant gift cards and had to pay for the purchase fee.
Having said that, the BIG W catalogue sometimes tells you about a purchase fee (e.g. in August 2022 and February 2023).
You are right though, who knows what will happen for this deal, especially since the previous deals listed above are for gift cards owned by Blackhawk Network, which is a company not known for waiving purchase fees in their deals.
@WookieMonster: Nobody really cares about the purchase fee since I believe most will be buying pocket money cards with digitalcash anyway =D The bigger problem is whether we can actually get ours hands on any.
@truetypezk: @truetypezk what’s ‘digitalcash’?
How does this avoid paying the card activation fee (if ends up not being waived as part of the promo).
@loveyou3000: Digitalcash is the card that you load pocket money gift cards to :) it doesn't affect the activation fee but you get to increase your account balance as long as you can actually find these cards for sale, which is the bigger problem.
@truetypezk: There were plenty of cards at Aldi's till the last day of the offer when the offer was flat 10% off with no activation…but no was going for them given the work involved…
Reckon ppl will go crazy for 2.86% discount?
@maverick1: Have you seen any at any BigW yet? I reckon they are already all presold/stolen lol.
And rather than calling it 2.86% discount, it is more like 2.86% profit for each churn.
@truetypezk: Ya saw a stack at my local BigW this morning …but clearly not the same qty as Aldi had…maybe they will get stocked tonight…
Sms issues are resolved now. Redemmed 5 cards per day Fri and Sat and got sms within 2 min
The redemption limit appears to be 5 gift cards per MicroGifts account per day and $999 available balance on the Digital Cash gift card at any one time.
Just clarifying WM's comment, the 5 gift cards per account per day is actually per 24 hour period (e.g. If you redeem them at 9pm, you won't be able to successfully redeem them until 9pm the following day. It errors if you try at anytime before the 24hrs).
I've managed to surpass the $999 available balance and my cards continue to add it seems
I personally didn't have any bad experiences, but I waited a week or so before activating mine, so some of the kinks might have gotten ironed out.
Ahaha I hope easternculture isn’t out of money yet
DigitalCash to buy these.
He can prob use his 3k pocket money to pay for these 😝
Looking forward to more details.
is activation fee per gift card or per transaction?
per card…
Doing the maths on the pocket money card in Big W,
Assuming 5.95$ activation fee, and the 10% applies to the waive. It would be 72.855$ for a 75$ card, which is 97.14%.
That's 2.86% discount?
Save a $1.55 on a $75 card, not really a bargain. Plus when I got them at ALDI their SMS system limited to 4 per customer, you get blocked from loading more.
Does not seem worth the hassle who wants to pay fees for cards these days we want as much discount
Rather stay in bed
Has anyone successfully used ShopBack SuperMarket card at Big W? Just thinking of buying one to test if it works for this deal
Shopback supermarket card doesn't work at bigw
Only works at supermarkets it's in the name.
I would not be so sure.
According to the Activ Visa gift card website (operated by the gift card owner) and the ShopBack website, the ShopBack Supermarket Visa gift card works at merchants using the following MCCs:
For example, transactions instore at Bakers Delight have been reported as MCC 5462 in the past. Would you call Bakers Delight a supermarket?
Of course, BIG W should be using MCC 5331 (Variety Stores) as its MCC and you should be declined at BIG W when trying to use this gift card, but there is a chance that Blackhawk Network did not correctly configure the gift card. I mean, this is the same gift card issuer that accidentally whitelisted MCC 5311 (Department Stores) on the OnlyONE Home Improvement Visa gift card and OzBargain took full advantage of that.
Just like Woolies, bigw has blocked all visa prepaid card from buying cash equivalent gift cards. So unless the pocket money cards have not been configured properly (in that case they can be purchased with the Coles Mastercard GCs), bigW wont allow you to use any Activ cards, not even the open MCC ones anyway.
@truetypezk: I actually just purchased 10x75 on my rewards card. They wouldn’t allow anymore. This time it’s 10x per member unlike the ultimate it’s 10x per transaction.
Having said that, I used a family’s member reward card and purchased 5 on one Activ VISA and the other 5 on my normal debit card.
@k1vnwng: lucky you with the stock..visited 3 stores this morning btwn 8:30 and 9 they had 0 stock…poor promo..
@maverick1: I went to Big W at QV, there’s still another 50 when I left. I was going to buy them all as I thought it was per transaction and the staff allowed me too but when we realised it was per member I couldn’t 😂.
@shane23: haha…I need to spend $20k to meet a card spend in next 3 weeks…want to store some money via these cards..these look safer than coles GC…
@maverick1: Ah yeah that’s the norm 20k spend requirements 😂 . I’m just keen to see how many EDR account you’ll need for that kinda of quota .
@k1vnwng: You have used regular activ visa successfully to pay for the pocket money cards? That is some really good news, I will head out to bigW now then.
@easternculture: You are really pushing it mate!
I think they just categorised it under the wrong type of gift cards, but they are still gift cards as purchases require staff approval. So I don't think rewards dollar/WISH will work.
@truetypezk: Im just thinking if you are able to purchace with active visa and coles mastercard, they probably are not coded in the system correctly. So reward dollars may still work.
$5.95 activation fee per card applies!
Thanks for confirming
Thanks, going back to boost deals.
what does this mean? Boost is that for mobile phones
Oh sorry just joking on the fact that boost sim deals have a higher return. Search for boost on this site and you’ll see the profit usually ranges from $2 to $4, lately going for as high as $6+.
Hi does the 10% apply to the $5.95 activation fee?
Also has anyone used a Coles Mastercard gift card and or TCN eftpos gift card as payment method?
Coles mc gc worked for me
Thanks for sharing info
Just wondering if Pocket Money is accepted as payment method for Prezzee via Apple Pay?
It is via paypal ;)
No more cards in a local bigw…
Is the 10 card limit per rewards member per day or per promo?
10 cards per promo…would need multiple EDR if you can find stock…
OK thank you
Not a problem here lol
Purchase fee of $5.95 does not attract the 10% discount.
Looks like this deal has been extended by another week (credit to freepoints.com.au)
very poor promotion…there literally was no stock from day 1. Visited 5 stores could only get 16cards…
re-visited one bigw which has no stock yesterday, found 3 cards on shelf but tab removed.
bought with afterpay 50-20.
funny thing is NO activation fee !? yes it did show $67.5 at check-out.
I scanned and added to MG straight away.
Must have been an afterpay special…
Hi. Can you share a copy of the receipt showing transaction without purchase fee please.
That shelving cards are stored on at Big W is a cabinet which opens up and addition stock is stored inside. It may be worth asking a staff member to check to see if they have any other stock. I tried locally 2 stores Melbourne N-W (Sunshine and Watergardens) but no additional cards were available.
The Pocket Money 10% off continues in the Big W catalogue from 14/
12 (page 31). Interested to know if the purchase fee remains in place.
https://www.bigw.com.au/bigw-catalogues#view=catalogue&saleI…
Not sure if there will be any stock left after the 1st week run…
Also, are we able to buy again with the same edr card for the new week?
It’s a new offer so should not be an issue. Also, there is no mention of the “ ten limit”.
Bottom of page
Quote: Offer limited to 3 gift cards per member
There is a small + at the bottom of the page that states “0ffer limited to 3 gift cards per member”. That + does not appear on any of the cards as the * and ^ appear, so maybe it applies to all. So there is probably a limit of 3 cards for every card shown incl Pocket Money?
That + is only on the Karta mastercard…
You are assuming the upcoming BIG W catalogue has been written correctly.
If you think about it, the BIG W catalogue for the current Pocket Money deal said nothing about a purchase fee, but:
There are a number of reports on here of people being slugged the $5.95 purchase fee.
The MicroGifts website says the $5.95 purchase fee is still applicable.
In another example, there was the complete mess with this deal, where BIG W featured Apple, Supercheap Auto, BCF, Rebel, TCN Him, PlayStation and Steam gift cards in one of their catalogues and placed a caret next to each of these gift cards (except the Apple gift cards). The caret pointed to fine print saying you would earn 20x Everyday Rewards points, except it turned out that the only gift card in that catalogue that was supposed to earn 20x Everyday Rewards points was the Apple gift cards (which had no caret next to it). Not confusing at all…
Make sure you read that a few times lol
Good find @Tangible! I missed that! Mmm…? so what will the limit be?
No limit I guess, but there is no stock at all.. kind of clearance sale
Update! Went to store and the manager rummaged through the cabinet and VOILA 11 Pocket Money cards were found. As soon as a card was scanned it showed the purchase fee of $5.95. So total before ER scan and discount was $80.95 and then $73.45 after ER scan. What did you do that was different @test8888??
So, if you are keen to acquire ask the manager to open and check the inner cabinet!
For those who have a Qantas Money Travel card you can send the money to your QMTc without any fees (normally 0.05%) at the moment. (Instant load option - using a debit card). Just like adding cash to your card, but instantly! Ain’t life great😀😁😃😋 !!!
No activation fee wavied this time?