Mecca may be Australia’s favourite beauty retailer but they’re also famously stingy with their sales. However, there’s a little known hack you can use to get 10% off almost any Mecca purchase.
Whilst Mecca’s own gift cards can’t be purchased at a discount, Mecca-compatible TCN Pamper gift cards are regularly included in promotions where you can either save 10% or earn thousands of Qantas or Velocity frequent flyer points.
How it works
The TCN Pamper is a merchant category gift card produced by The Card Network. It’s essentially a prepaid Eftpos/Mastercard gift card that’s programmed to work at any business that uses one of the following merchant category codes:
- 7011: Lodging: Hotels, Motels, Resorts: not elsewhere classified
- 7230: Barber and Beauty Shops
- 7298: Health and Beauty Spas
However, those are just the three codes that TCN list on their website. In reality, the TCN Pamper gift card actually supports a much wider range of businesses:
- 5977: Cosmetic Stores
- 3747: Club Corp/Club Resorts
- 7997: Clubs: Country Clubs, Membership (Athletic, Recreation, Sports), Private Golf Courses
- 7999: Recreation Services: not elsewhere classified
- 8041: Chiropractors
- 8049: Chiropodists, Podiatrists
- 8099: Health Practitioners, Medical Services: not elsewhere classified
The key one here is ‘5977: Cosmetic Stores’ as that’s the merchant category code assigned to Mecca as well as similar businesses such as Sephora.
This means you can spend TCN Pamper gift cards at Mecca in Australia, including to purchase Mecca’s own gift cards.
When you’re paying with a TCN Pamper card, you don’t have to tell them that you’re using a gift card as it should just work. Treat it like you would a debit card.
TCN Pamper gift cards are available in both physical and digital versions. There’s an option on the TCN Pamper website to convert a physical card into a digital one so that you make purchases online or add the gift card to a mobile wallet (e.g. Apple Pay).
To use a physical Pamper gift card, all you have to do is swipe it in the payment terminal, select Savings and then enter the four digit PIN on the back of the card. If you have a digital TCN Pamper gift card, just tap your phone or watch to pay.
Whilst TCN Pamper gift cards have worked at Mecca for years, it’s possible that one day they might stop allowing it. For that reason, you should spend them sooner than later unless you’re prepared to use them somewhere else (e.g. at a hair salon).
Using multiple gift cards
If your purchase exceeds the amount on the TCN Pamper gift card, you can ask to split the payment across multiple cards when shopping in-store at Mecca.
For online shops, however, you can’t use multiple TCN Pamper gift cards to pay for a single order since they’re treated like credit/debit cards rather than traditional gift cards.
A possible workaround is to use each TCN Pamper gift card to buy a Mecca gift card since you can apply multiple of those to a single online order. However, your purchases may start getting declined if you do this more than a few times.
To keep things simple, it’s easier to just spend your TCN Pamper gift cards in-store at Mecca.
TCN Pamper gift card promotions
There is a major promotion on TCN Pamper gift cards approximately once every month with most of them occurring at either Woolworths or Coles.
Sometimes they are upfront discounts such as 10% off whilst on other occasions the supermarkets will offer 20x Everyday Rewards or Flybuys points for every dollar you spend on each gift card.
With the 20x Everyday Rewards or Flybuys points offers, you are essentially getting 10% of what you spend on the gift cards returned to you in the form of points that can be redeemed at Woolworths or Coles, respectively (plus their associated brands).
You can also transfer Everyday Rewards to Qantas and Flybuys points to Velocity. This option is preferred by those who like to use frequent flyer points to book reward flights, particularly those in business class.
An an example, if you buy a $100 TCN Pamper gift card at Woolworths during a 20x points offer, you will earn 2,000 Everyday Rewards points, convertible to either $10 off your shop or 1,000 Qantas points.
If you have to purchase something from Mecca immediately and can’t wait for one of these bigger promotions, here are some constantly available offers you can access instead:
- 5% cashback on TCN Pamper gift cards on ShopBack
- 3x Qantas points on TCN Pamper gift cards on Qantas Marketplace
It’s rare but sometimes there are even discounts of more than 10% off. For example, every year since 2020 Coles have run a 15% off promotion on TCN Pamper and other gift cards in November for Black Friday.
Finding these offers
All promotions on TCN Pamper gift cards are published right here on GCDB. Past offers can also be viewed on this page.
To be alerted to all new and upcoming offers on TCN Pamper and other gift cards, make sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram. You can also join over 16,000 members in our Gift Card Deals Facebook group.
Featured image credit: GCDB, Mecca