Gift Card Spread has a large variety of gift cards on offer for impressive discounts of up to 31% - some of the best we’ve seen among the best gift card exchange services. However, there isn’t an app on offer which penalises Gift Card Spread when compared to competitors such as CardCash, and the process of selling your card is far too complicated to be worth the hassle. A good option for buying gift cards on the cheap, but sell elsewhere.
Gift Card Spread: Selling your gift card
- A drawn-out process
- You get to decide how much your card is worth (they might not agree)
With most gift card exchange sites you can enter the type and value of your gift card and it’ll give you an upfront offer. We’ve tested each site on how much we can get for a $20 Walmart, Kohl’s and Target gift card respectively. However, we didn’t enjoy Gift Card Spread’s approach to buying our gift cards.
Instead of simply adding the value and brand of the card and getting an offer, Gift Card Spread makes you enter this information and then the percentage of the card value that you want for it (which is, surely, as much as possible). It then asks you to make an account and enter your address.
This long and extracted process is so tiresome compared to other sites, especially when you don’t know what you’ll be offered at the end of it. If you’re confident that you won’t get a better deal for your cards elsewhere it might be worth going through, but we didn’t like the idea of committing and giving so much information before even knowing how much we’d be offered for our cards, to then wait 24 hours to get an offer. Simply not worth the hassle.
Gift Card Spread: Buying gift cards
- Impressive discounts
- Great array of cards to choose from
This website is easy to use. Retailers are automatically listed alphabetically but you can also search by price, card type, or a multitude of categories. Like other exchange websites, each retailer has a saving of ‘up to’ a certain amount. You can then click to see what your options are.
You can also see the highest discounts available for any given retailer and we saw cuts as high as 31 percent. Discounts and availability depend on the supply and demand of a retailer, so the deals you'll see will vary. Still we saw a lot of options and great discounts on Gift Card Spread.We tested for gift cards from American Eagle, Macy’s and Walmart and were pleased to find options for all. However, the Walmart offer was so tiny it didn’t feel worth it, with a 0.05% discount on offer. We had better luck with American Eagle; an 18% discount which is comparable to Cardcash and Raise. Macy’s, too, was on offer for a decent 5% saving. While it depends on the retailer, you can buy both electronic and physical gift cards. If you choose the latter it will take 3-7 business days to receive your card in the mail.
While federal law requires gift cards remain valid for five years after the purchase date, Gift Card Spread does buy cards with expiration dates. However, they do have to be at least six months in the future, and sellers are required to mention this when posting the card for sale. Still, we'd recommend you read all the fine print on any transaction. Gift Card Spread only guarantees their cards for 60 days.
Gift Card Spread: Customer reviews
- History of complaints
- A poor BBB rating
Gift Card Spread has earned a C+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, one of the worst grades of the websites we tested. The BBB isn’t the final say in terms of where you should spend your money, but it’s something to keep in mind. It’s pertinent because Gift Card Spread is flagged due to consumer complaints alleging unresponsive customer service and receiving cards with a zero balance and cards with balances that disappear later without warning.
Consumers also noted incidents of nonpayment when selling cards to the website. In 2016, the company said they had righted all of the aforementioned problems but after a second review in 2017, the BBB still found the pattern of consumer allegations still continued.
Gift Card Spread: Verdict
Despite consumer complaints, we feel Gift Card Spread has a pleasing and easy to use interface with a lot of gift cards to offer. Its problems with the BBB don’t make it ideal, but it’s worth checking out.
However, if you’re looking to sell your gift card we can’t recommend it due to the lengthy process and lack of transparency over how much you’ll be paid.
