Delta is back with another promotion for buying gift cards…
Starbucks bonus gift card with Delta gift card purchase
Here’s an easy promotion that could be worth taking advantage of. In celebration of Mother’s Day, if you purchase a $300+ Delta gift card, you can receive $20 worth of Starbucks gift cards as a bonus:
- The offer is valid while supplies last or until May 11, 2026, whichever comes first
- Each person can take advantage of this promotion at most one time
- This offer is available to residents of the United States who are 18+ years old
- The Delta gift cards can be redeemed 72 hours after purchase, and have no expiration date
- The Delta gift cards can only be used to purchase tickets, and not for upgrades, taxes & fees on award tickets, or other incidentals
- The Starbucks eGift cards will be emailed separately from the Delta gift cards, don’t expire, and can be used multiple times, up to the maximum value
Getting a $20 Starbucks gift card for a $300 purchase is potentially a good deal, as it’s essentially the equivalent of an incremental ~6.7% return.
The catch with buying Delta gift cards
If you’re a Delta frequent flyer, on the surface it’s a no brainer to pick up a Delta gift card, so you can get an extra reward for money you’d spend anyway. Just to be clear, you’ll still earn SkyMiles and Medallion Qualifying Dollars for your flights, as you usually would when you go to redeem your gift card for a flight.
There is just one catch to buying Delta gift cards — the Delta gift card purchase as such won’t code as a Delta travel purchase for the purposes of your credit card spending, since the transaction is processed by a third party. What are the implications of that if you’re maximizing rewards?
- If it did code as a Delta airfare purchase (which it doesn’t), you could earn credit card rewards as you usually would for airfare purchases, so there would be no opportunity cost to funding your Delta travel this way; you could earn up to 5x points on airfare purchases
- Since it doesn’t code as an airfare purchase, you’d be better off using a card that’s lucrative for everyday spending, and there’s quite an opportunity cost there
If you’re anything like me, you’d ordinarily earn 5x points for an airfare purchase, while you’re only earning 2x points for everyday spending. So the opportunity cost here is 3x points per dollar spent. I value transferable points at 1.7 cents each, so that’s like an opportunity cost of 5.1%. That makes the value of this promotion pretty marginal, assuming you’re in a similar boat.
Bottom line
At the moment you can receive $20 worth of Starbucks gift cards when you purchase a $300+ Delta gift card. While this isn’t the highest value offer on earth, if you spend money with Delta regularly, then this offer could be worth it.
Do you plan on taking advantage of this Delta gift card promo?
