Online Shopping Portals. What’s next?
All of the online shopping portals, including my favorite Ultimate Rewards Mall have been advertising Valentine’s Day specials for the past month and a half or so. Now I’m wondering, what will tomorrow bring? Will there be great new deals? Will Sears 10X return to Ultimate Rewards? I haven’t done too well with similar predictions recently, but I’ll try anyway:
My guess is that nothing will change for a few days. The shopping portal admins will forget to take down the Valentine’s Day displays. After a few days, we’ll see the references to Valentine’s Day start to disappear, but with no major promotions to replace them until, maybe, March 1.
It’s not an optimistic prediction, but there you go. Anyone else want to go on the record with your prediction?
GiftCards.Com
A helpful reader recently tipped me off to the fact that a shopping portal named MyDealsAndCoupons offers 3.2% cash back at GiftCards.com for both buying and selling merchant gift cards! There are exciting gift card arbitrage opportunities here! I’m testing this out right now and will report back soon with the results. If you’d like to get started before the results are in, consider using this referral link from the reader who tipped me off, as a thank you for the tip. You will get the same cash back you would anyway, and he’ll get 10% of any cash back that you get.
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[…] made a bit of a game out of trying to predict Ultimate Rewards Mall changes. For examples see here and here. Well, there is some reason to believe we’ll see some changes in the mall […]
groovy. Per my other comments on other posts, I think I’ll resume trying to hit the spend on my Delta Platinum card. With these gift cards, I have a feeling I might be able to hit my 25k spend with a $250 out of pocket expense (at most not including miles and MQMs, so $250 for 35k miles+10k MQM), even while hitting my CC signup bonus spends.
Thanks!
Thanks!
The gift cards I have (merchant/restaurant cards) are not eligible for entering the code+PIN, so I have to mail them in.
Have you compared giftcards.com to other gift card resellers (looking at giftcardgranny.com now)? While giftcards.com offers the best return (for $1000/year), it looks like shopathome.com also gives 1.6% for selling cards at cardpool (http://www.shopathome.com/Coupons/cardpool.com?IAFCG=tRaAKn5SN1XLdvliz37Mgg== ) and cardpool provides free shipping labels, though they don’t offer as much (for the merchant cards I’m looking at).
Steve: Yes I’ve used both giftcards.com with MyDealsAndCoupons and cardpool.com with ShopAtHome. Both sent checks quickly. In both cases I have the cash back as pending in the portals. I just double checked the numbers and, amazingly, both cash back portals base the % back on the face value of the card!
Just found these notes in their FAQ that make giftcards.com a little less attractive to me.
“Is there a limit on how much I can sell to you?
Yes, there is a $500.00 per customer / household limit every 6 months. ”
“How do you recommend I send the card(s) to you?
We recommend mailing your gift cards First class insured or with tracking. We are not responsible for gift cards lost in the mail.”
Steve: Great find regarding the $500 limit at GiftCards.com. That’s really unfortunate! I did try selling a gift card to them and it worked without any problem. They offer a great option to simply enter the gift card code and pin so that you don’t have to worry about mailing at all. I received the check in a few days and I do have 3.2% cash back pending from MyDealsAndCoupons. Just FYI, it is 3.2% of the sale amount not the face value. For example, if you sell a $100 Walmart card for $91, you’ll get 3.2% of $91 back.
Do you have anything new to report about selling gift cards at giftcards.com? I’m looking to unload some gift cards, and they have the best offer right now. an extra 3.2% would be nice. I’m also looking for reviews for folks that have sold merchant gift cards to gift cards.com. Are they reliable? How long does it take to get a check from them? I’ve not found the giftcards.com website to be helpful.
Wow…I’ve been real close to swapping cards around for huge mile payouts, and this might just be the trick. Do you know if the 3.2% is on the total amount of the gift card that you sell($100 card value), or on the amount that you get paid (amount giftcards.com gives you)?
Ryan: I’m pretty sure it is 3.2% of the payout amount, not the face value of the card. I tried this with a Walmart card on Monday so I should be able to report back with results pretty soon.