Thanks to you bullies, I decided to splurge the other day and buy a $450 Weber grill. I wasn’t able to bring myself to a point where I could justify the purchase, but after a bunch of peer pressure from some of my readers I felt I had to.
Okay, that’s a lie.
I just really wanted a new grill, and your encouragement was just the nudge I needed. So thank you for that.
I don’t know if you keep up with the comments that I get on my blog posts, but on my previous post there was a comment made that TURNED MY WORLD UPSIDE DOWN!!!!
Buy the grill. Yours is toast and you can afford the Weber. If buying at Home Depot, go to giftcardgranny.com and buy some discount Home Depot gift cards to cover the purchase. That will reduce the price by 8-10% which will ease your pain–especially if you get a Memorial Day sale price.
What is this sorcery?
It sounds too good to be true… ONLY IT IS TRUE!!!!
Intrigued I hopped on over to Giftcardgranny.com (GCG) punched in Lowes (since that is closer to me than Home Depot) and BAM, hundreds of gift cards were being sold at a discount.
GCG doesn’t actually sell the gift cards, they simply point you to various websites that do. Kind of like how you don’t purchase your airfare from Kayak, but they simply show you prices for all airlines.
I was lucky enough to find a $400 Lowes gift card being sold for $359.96. There may be similar deals on Home Depot coupons.
A 10.2% savings!!!!!
I was a little sketched out by the process and was fearing it was all a scam, but I decided to be your guniea pig and give it a try. The gift card I bought had an e-code associated with it (so I didn’t have to wait for a physical gift card to be mailed to me).
I punched in my credit card information, submitted my payment, and sure enough, 5 minutes after being notified my transaction went through, I got an email with my Lowe’s gift card code.
The moment of truth
I was so nervous that I just got suckered out of $360.
I clicked over to Lowes.com, added the $450 grill to my cart, and on the billing screen punched in my gift card code.
IT FREAKIN’ WORKED!!!!
In less than 5 minutes I saved myself 10% off an item that almost never goes on sale (Weber grills are like iPhones, they’re almost never sold at a discount because they don’t need to be).
My life has been changed forever.
Why pay full price for anything when I can save between 2% and 10% at virtually every big box store?
Answer: I won’t.
So thank you PDITF commenter for sharing that gem of a website, and enlightening me and my readers.
Oh, and on a random side note. I think the BBQ gods wanted me to get this grill for free because in the mail yesterday I got a $500 Chase bank promotional offer. I get $300 for opening a checking account with them (I’m currently with Wells Fargo) and setting up a direct deposit. And $200 if I open up a savings account and transfer over $15,000 that I leave there for 90 days. Totally worth it as this promotion covers the full cost of my Weber!!! WOOHOO!!!
Great call on the grill! I bought the exact same one last year, and it’s worked amazing so far. I never cooked at all before this, but now I’m excited to make food on it, which my fiancee is thrilled about!
I haven’t done the gift card cards before, but it’s a good idea and will keep it in mind for my next big purchase.
So glad you posted this! I planned on going through gift card granny this weekend for a Lowe’s card, but I was nervous because I have never done it before, and now I have a personal testimony that it works! Wahoo!! Thank you 🙂
That’s awesome!
Another great option is the Raise.com app. I love it, because anywhere that I am spending money I just punch it into the app to see what kind of gift cards are available.
Most of them are delivered to the digital wallet that you can use on the spot.
Cheers!
Great tip! Also, a lot of stores and restaurants offer promos like “buy $50 gift card and get $10 one free”, especially around various gifting holidays. If you already shop/eat there, why not?
Another – I shop at Kroger and on their e-coupons that you load to your shopper card they have discounts off purchases of gift cards, say whaaaat???
I’m sure other grocery stores have it too.
Enjoy your new (free) grill!!
Been doing the HD gift card online for about a year, works great, but now there will be less of them to go around thanks to you!!!
I’ve used giftcard zen in the past, to purchase a washer/dryer combo from Lowes. I was also skeptical at first, but it worked. I was actually “gambling” close to $2,000, since I didn’t know if it was going to work. As you can relate, it was such a relief when the codes went through at the register. If you waited until memorial day weekend, you could have possibly saved a bit more.
Maybe you can write a blog post on the Webber grill. Let us know how you like it.
I thought about waiting til Memorial Day but from what I’ve read online Weber grills do not go on sale even then. The other cheaper brand grills likely will. But on the off chance they do I can simply bring my receipt in for a price adjustment for up to 90 days after I bought.
Aha! good thinkin’
You should also check out Upromise…..
Congrats on the frugal purchase of the Weber. I already knew about GiftCardGranny but I’ve never actually purchased gift cards from there. Thanks for letting us know about your experience with the site.
I’ve been too nervous to try those gift card sites but your experience makes me eager to try it next time I’m shopping for something big.
I got the promo offer from Chase bank but they only offered me $450! I thought that was pretty good but $500 is even better.
And why didn’t you tell me about this last year when I was redoing my bathroom and spending several thousand on tiles, vanity, mirrors, medicine cabinet, paint, and all kinds of accessories at Lowe’s? Hmmm?
The website was brought up in Ninja’s last post’s comments section….
It was a joke. After five years, I think Brandon and I can afford to joke a little with each other.
If you’re going to be shopping at a store anyways, and they have the lowest price I’ve found these sites to be extremely useful. The important thing is to not buy gift cards and then spend it just because you are getting a discount. But someplace you were going to buy anyways? Go for it!
Another thing I’ve found useful is using online shopping portals like ebates to get cash back for online shopping. Though sometimes just going straight to Amazon or another website can be cheaper.
[…] you heard of the site GiftcardGranny? I had not, but this blog made me think it may not be a bad thing to check […]
I found that site through some reviews a few months ago and my husband and I have been using it to fix up our house on a budget ever since! We did have a few hick-ups along the way which makes me more cautious:
1. In one case we got one gift card which was a few cents short vs the value that was advertised. I know it was only a few cents, but considering we are working on paying off debt everything adds up. (We have bought at least 10 gift cards at this point over several occasions, and only had the problem once!)
2. I was not impressed with cardpool in particular. Their ‘security’ procedure is very frustrating, and delays your purchase unnecessarily for a process which did not frankly sound very secure based on their explanation of it over the phone.
So glad to have been of assistance to you! I love saving $$ and sharing info with others.
There’s another deal for Amex credit card holders: check your offers on your online account. You can get a $20 statement credit when you use your Amex card for an Amazon purchase(must click on the offer). Also, if you have a Smart & Final store in your area and they allow you to buy gift cards with a credit card, you can purchase $50 gift card with your Amex cc and get $25 statement credit. You can do this 3x (3 different transactions). $150 of gift cards for $75 is a good deal in my book. Unfortunately, the S&F in my area won’t let you use a cc to buy gift cards. While visiting my daughter in Reno last weekend, we went to that one. Voila! It worked! We will use these to purchase a kitchen aid mixer at Kohls.com. With my 20% Kohls discount ($70), the gift card discount ($75), the rebate ($30), we will pay $174 for an item normally priced $349. In addition, we will get $40 in Kohl’s cash for our next purchase (based on the $205 cost before sending in for the $30 rebate).
Again, you have to go to your Amex online account and look for and click on these offers.
One other thing about Gift Card Granny: the e-cards are usually a higher percentage discount. Personally, I prefer the physical gift card but have used the e-cards when purchasing something online.
I’ve never had a problem with either one.
If you had set up a free ebates account and then clicked on Lowes.com from ebates, you would have gotten an additional 4% cash-back from ebates. I was pretty skeptical about using ebates, because I’m not a couponer, but it’s basically free money.
So glad you found success using our site (giftcardgranny.com)! We have a lot of fun helping people save money. All of the partner sites we work with offer money-back guarantees so you don’t have to worry so much! The details of each vary so be sure to check the policy of the site you are purchasing from.
We’ve got a newsletter and mobile apps to help you as well 🙂 Good luck!