There are many reasons that you might want to increase credit card spend. You may need to meet minimum spend requirements on new credit cards in order to earn big welcome offers. Perhaps you want to earn high level elite status or other big spend bonuses, as Greg did with Delta. Maybe you simply want to get extra rewards using cards with big category bonuses, or rewards for everyday spend.
Merchandise and gift card buying groups can be very useful tools to increase your credit card spend capacity. Additionally, selling to buying groups serves as a small business, which allows access to the very attractive world of business credit cards for those that don’t already have them.
In this post, we’ll discuss what buying groups are, how they work, benefits and risks of using them and also provide a non-comprehensive list of some of the buying groups that we’ve worked with.
What are Buying Groups?
Buying and selling 3rd party gift cards and merchandise reselling can be done directly via online marketplaces like Ebay or to buyer’s groups that buy the products/card (or more accurately card number) directly from you and then resell them to another party. Discounted merchandise and gift cards will often have individual or household limits imposed that keeps one individual from getting more than a few at a time. Buyer’s groups get around that limitation by harnessing the purchasing power of large groups of people, enabling them to buy large quantities of discounted items (that they then resell).
The rates that you get from buying groups will rarely be as good as reselling directly, but it’s much less hassle and carries with it a lower risk of selling to a flaky buyer. Buyer’s groups will also find deals and present them to you as opposed to you having to search them out directly and know current resell rates. That said, it requires a fair bit of trust as you are sending merchandise/gift cards to the group’s warehouse before getting paid and you’re floating that purchase cost for some period of time (usually 2-3 weeks) before getting the money back. While relatively low, there’s always some risk of non-payment selling either directly or to buyer’s clubs. It only takes a few non-payments or lost shipments to erase a lot of profit.
Manufacturing spend through selling to buyer’s groups can be a bit of a grind, but it can also be very rewarding. In some cases people have started reselling for the purpose of generating credit card spend, but eventually found that it’s a good way to earn money in general (or started their own buyer’s group). That said, it does takes effort and organization to be successful. So, let’s dive into how buyer’s groups work in a little more detail.
How do Buying Groups work?
Below is the general workflow for selling to buying groups. Because gift card buyers usually don’t require a physical card shipment, all of the shipping/tracking/receiving steps primarily apply to merchandise.
- Sign Up – All buying groups require that you open an account with them. This will usually involve name, e-mail, phone number, payment details, etc. Most of the groups listed in this post are open invite, but there’s a couple that will need to approve you and that process can sometimes involve a short interview to suss out your past experience and make sure that their group is a good fit.
- Watch for deals – Once you’re signed-up, you’ll keep any eye out for deals on whatever cards/products the buying group is purchasing. Each group has its own preferred method for disseminating deal opportunities. The most common are e-mail, WhatsApp and Telegram (although some use Slack, Discord, etc).
- Commit to purchase – Most buying groups require that you commit to an item in order to get paid for it. This is primarily so that they can keep from over/underbuying and have a fairly precise estimate of the quantity that they are expecting to receive. Groups vary in how you commit to an item. Those with websites usually have a button that you can click, others will use Google Forms, shared spreadsheets or even direct messaging. You can almost always modify your commitment in the event that you aren’t able to purchase an item.
- Ship item to buying group – Every buying group has one or more delivery addresses, primarily in sales tax-exempt states. Some will accept drop-offs for local clients as well. The most common shipping method is “drop-ship,” which means you have the retailer ship directly to the receiving address (thus avoiding sales tax). Some retailers will require you ship an item to your home in order for the order to be fulfilled and in that case, the buying group will usually send you a prepaid shipping label once you receive the item. It’s good practice to add your buying group ID number to the shipping address; some groups will require it. Gift card buyers all have some method of online submission (website, Google Form, spreadsheet, etc).
- Tracking – When the items ships, the retailer will provide a tracking number. Almost all groups want you to pair that tracking number with your commitment, either using a tab in your online account or via spreadsheet/Google Form. This makes receiving more efficient on their end and provides a second mechanism of attaching that item to you. It’s usually not the end of world if you forget to add the tracking number, but doing it often could result in an account suspension, simply because it creates more work on their end. No one wants anything to get lost.
- Receiving – The buyers group will check in the item upon arrival at their warehouse. Some groups will e-mail/message you letting you know that it’s arrived, for others, you’ll need to check yourself. How quickly an item is checked in after receipt will vary from group to group. It will tend to be slower if it’s a busy time like the holidays or Prime Day and faster during slower times with less deals. On average, it will usually take 3-5 days. After check-in, that purchase price will be added to your account as payable cash.
- Payment – Buyer’s groups vary a bit in how they handle payment. Many merchandise clubs will require that you manually request an ACH payment or e-check in order to get paid. GC buyers will usually list payment speed on the deal and then will do an ACH transfer once that window arrives. The bigger ones have a set day that they send out payments each week and you’ll be able to see in advance how much you’re getting paid that week.
Tips for using Buying Groups
- Start small, with known groups that have references.
- Organization is very important. Make sure that you can keep track of necessary cards, numbers, pay-out amounts, shipments etc. Don’t let your buying outpace your organizational ability.
- Diversify. Use a few different groups so that you can comparison-shop for the best rates and avoid having any one group owe you a massive amount of cash.
- Be very careful about the rate you sell to buyer’s clubs at. Many of them do a fair amount of below-cost deals, when they pay you less than you are paying for the merchandise. Be sure that the rewards you’re earning justify the cost you’re paying in time and money to participate in below-cost deals.
- If shipping merchandise to your home, factor taxes and shipping costs in to the profitability of the deal.
- If shipping directly to a group (drop-shipping), be aware that many large retailers have the addresses for common buyer groups blocked and will auto-cancel orders that are made to those addresses. Sometimes this can be remedied by “jigging” their address (adding additional characters, spaces, etc), but sometimes it’s necessary to ship to your own address to get the order through. In those cases, additional shipping costs will usually be incurred.
- Many stores block the ability to buy 3rd party gift cards with Visa/MC gift cards. It’s easiest for both gc and merchandise to pay using credit cards.
- Our own Stephen Pepper’s website, GC Galore, is probably the most-used resource for tracking gift card sales (and is used by many buyer’s clubs). It’s worth a follow.
Risks of using Buying Groups
- Risk of non-payment is real, both in merchandise and gift card buying groups. Like all companies, buying groups sometimes go out of business. In those cases, there are often customers left holding the bag. In one of the most notorious cases, a gift card group went out of business and one unfortunate gal was owed over $100K. This is one of the reasons why it's wise to diversify as a general rule.
- Some retailers like Target, Best Buy, Ebay and Dell will block accounts that they suspect are reselling from ordering through their sites. Dell operates on a hair-trigger. Shutdowns happen. Most folks reading this will probably not be buying from these retailers at a clip that draws their ire (outside of Dell), but go in with eyes open.
- Amazon.com allows buying 3rd party gift cards with Amazon gift card credit, but Amazon has been known to shut down the accounts of some customers doing this. If you value your Amazon account, proceed with caution.
- Amazon.com is also one of the easiest retailers from which to drop-ship. Shutdowns do happen, though. It pays to start small, ramp up slowly, and pay as much as you can for buying group products with credit cards instead of Amazon gift cards.
List of Buying Groups
Below is a (partial) list of buying groups. Except where noted, I’ve personally used all of them. Most of the groups below have websites, but I also included a few smaller groups that only operate via Telegram and/or WhatsApp. This list is meant to be informational and a group’s appearance here shouldn’t be considered an endorsement by Frequent Miler. Where WhatsApp/Telegram links are included it’s with the permission of the group.
Reader reviews that have been left in the comments are linked underneath each group. We’d love to hear both your positive and negative experiences and will periodically add them below.
Merchandise
- BuyForMeRetail (BFMR)
- BuyGetRewards (BGR)
- Primary Notification Channel: E-mail, Telegram, WhatsApp
- Submission method: Website
- Notes: Currently, BGR is under a website renovation and is not active. Once they return, they’re a good option to follow. They don’t have the amount of the deals that the bigger guys do, but sometime offer noticeably better rates.
- Closeout NJ
- Primary Notification Channel: E-mail
- Submission method: Website
- Notes: I’ve never used Closeout NJ myself, but they’re a high-volume group that a lot of people find very useful.
- DCB
- Primary Notification Channel: Slack, WhatsApp
- Submission method: Shared spreadsheet
- Notes: DCB is smaller group that I started using a couple of years ago for US Mint coin deals. It has grown a ton since and does a tremendous (and creative) variety of offers (merchandise, coins, Costco gold, gift cards, fuel points, etc). No website (WhatsApp sign-up linked above).
- MaxOut Deals (this is our affiliate link — thank you!)
- Primary Notification Channel: E-mail, Telegram, WhatsApp
- Submission method: Website
- Notes: MaxOut is a newer player that’s put a ton of resources into their operations and is part of the same group as the electronics wholesaler Wireless World. They’re very buyer-friendly, with competitive rates, prompt processing and terrific communication. I’ve found that I have to keep my eye on their received pricing as it sometimes varies from offer price (by very small amounts), but they’re very good about fixing it quickly and without argument.
- Reader Reviews: 1
- MYS
- Primary Notification Channel: E-mail, Telegram, WhatsApp
- Submission method: Website
- Notes: Another big, old group that I’ve never used. I know a lot of people that use MYS, but I also notice more service complaints as well (and that could be just due to higher volume). We’ve received numerous reports of severe payment delays and lack of communication from MYS over the last several months.
- 1, 2
- PFS
- Primary Notification Channel: E-mail
- Submission method: Website
- Notes: Primarily does US Mint deals, which have been very slow over the last year. PFS evidently got way over their skis on a deal last year on concert tickets. Poor organization and communication resulted in both the company and consumers losing quite a bit of money. They’ve primarily done coin deals in the past, and I’ve never heard of any issues with those. But, based on how they handled this deal (and the folks who did it with them), some caution is warranted. See more in this post.
- Reader Reviews: 1, 2, 3
- Pointsmaker
- Primary Notification Channel: E-mail, Telegram, WhatsApp
- Submission method: Website, Google Forms
- Notes: Established group that does a wide variety of merchandise deals and very occasionally gift cards. Easy-to-use platform (very similar to MaxOut Deals and BGR). I often find deals here that aren’t being covered by the other groups. Recently, it seems like I’ve been seeing more reports of extended payment timeframes.
- Reader Reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4,
- The Buying Group
- Primary Notification Channel: E-mail, Telegram
- Submission method: Website
- Notes: Formerly known as “The Deal Buyer,” this group was recently sold and renamed. They offer a lot of deals (including quite a bit of below-cost) and have an easy-to-use platform. I was hearing of some service complaints right before they were sold, but it seems those have improved with the ownership change. One reader has reported some significant bounced checks.
- USA
Gift Cards
- Aligned Incentives (AI)
- Primary Notification Channel: E-mail
- Submission method: Website
- Notes: In my opinion, the easiest-to-use GC site for new folks. They offer a lot of deals, their online platform is super-slick and catches most submission mistakes before they’re made. Great communication and competitive rates.
- Reader Reviews: 1
- CardCash
- Primary Notification Channel: Website
- Submission method: Website
- Notes: Another big site whose rates tend to be quite a bit lower than many other groups here. The one advantage to CardCash is that they let you sell them gift cards for random or uneven amounts, so it might be good option if you have unwanted gift cards received as a gift, rather than reselling as such. Unlike Raise, you can also sell to CardCash at a guaranteed (but usually quite poor) rate, as opposed to having to wait for it to sell.
- Duck Deals
- Primary Notification Channel: Telegram, WhatsApp
- Submission method: Google Forms
- Notes: Derrick “Duck” is one of the nicest guys around and runs this lower-volume GC group. His rates are competitive and he’s great for folks in the HEB footprint. Payment timeframes can be very slow, but he’s transparent with his process.
- Gift Card Arbitrage (Telegram Link)
- Primary Notification Channel: Telegram, WhatsApp
- Submission method: Shared Spreadsheet
- Notes: Run by Eugene Weinstein, GCA primarily buys gift cards at good rates, but also buys fuel points, does merchandise deals, and runs a mileage trading group. Very above-board and almost instantly-communicative. No website (WhatsApp and Telegram sign-up links above).
- QCGC
- Primary Notification Channel: Website/Telegram
- Submission method: Spreadsheet
- Notes: High-volume, Telegram-specific group that hits a nice sweet-spot of competitive rates and good variety of brands.
- GCX/Raise
- Primary Notification Channel: E-mail, Website
- Submission method: Website
- Notes: The biggest guys in the GC-reselling sphere. They usually don’t have the best rates, but can be useful because of the massive variety of cards that they sell and the fact that they allow you to use odd denominations (as opposed to specific amounts like most buying groups). One potential disadvantage is that you have to list your card and wait for it to sell before getting any money.
- The Card Bay (TCB)
- Primary Notification Channel: E-mail, Website
- Submission method: Website
- Notes: Very big bulk buyer/seller that’s been around forever. I rarely found them to have the best rates, but one reader who uses them often says that are very competitive with the cards he sells. Like Raise, they buy a lot of card brands that other groups don’t.
- Reader reviews: 1
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BFMR uses Discord, not aware of them using Telegram or Whatsapp.
Check out CardCenter.cc for your Gift Card section. Have been using them, in addition to others, for the last year.
Nice overview! I am looking into BGs for GCs. Newbie question, if the BG goes bankrupt after I have sent them my gift card numbers, before I get paid, can I still use those gift cards or sell them to other BGs? In other words, I want to understand the downside protection. If I don’t get paid for the GCs I already sent, will I still be able to use them myself.
Something that differentiates gift card reselling from drop-shipping physical products, is that if everything crashes and burns, you retain the value of the gift cards if they still have balances on them, where as physical goods are gone forever. Granted, I’m a biased observer as an owner of one of the companies listed above, but I feel like gift card reselling is an objectively safer venture.
I still believe GC reselling can still go bad very quickly if there’s an unforeseen disruption. The moment brokers receive cards they are listed for sale and may be sold very quickly depending on the deal. Payout from broker to original buyer is 2 weeks or more in my experience. If I don’t receive payment after 2 weeks those gift cards could have been used by the end buyer already.
Like all things, everyone should only do what they feel comfortable with. Trust should be earned and not freely given.
Did someone really lose $100k to a gift card buying group?
Anyway, I’ve used BFMR and PM. Would recommend both, to a degree.
Initially, I liked BFMR because they paid out within a day or delivery, but Amazon started cancelling my orders after less than 10 orders and I decided it wasn’t worth losing my account over for some points. If you have an Amazon credit card that pays back 5%, then it might be worth the effort. Otherwise, I’m seeing more below-cost offers at BFMR that just don’t make sense given the risk.
With PM, they take 2-4 weeks to pay out (longer during busy periods), and that uncertainty sucks. They also have a lot of at or below cost offers, and it is a mad dash to fill out the form when the deal is release. They pay for shipping, so there is less risk of your account getting cancelled (you get stuff delivered to your home address), but you have to spend more time preparing the packages and dropping them off at UPS. Judging by how quickly the forms are filled and the deal closes, there are a lot of folks living in low/no-tax states, or folks are stacking credit card merchant offers to offset the sales tax and break even (before points).
The article mixes buying GCs with BGs. The two are completely different things.
BGs do not deal with or buy GCs (except for a couple of BGs buying the $1000 Trump Doral E-Gift card when it goes on sale). Since this article is titled “Buying Groups”, all GC mentions should be edited out to avoid confusion.
Also, keep in mind all stores (including Amazon) forbid reselling in their TOCs. Amazon is more tolerant than others for established accounts, but will still routinely cancel orders when its algorithm detects reselling activity, and will permanently lock accounts that it believes are being used solely for reselling. Also Amazon will not honor any warranty or protection if the shipping address is to a BG. In other words, if the package is lost or stolen, Amazon will tell you this is a “freight forwarder address” and will not refund you.
Other stores like BestBuy, Walmart, Target, etc.. also will recognize BG addresses and many will lock your account. YMMV.
Unless I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying, that’s not correct.
Many buying groups only buy GCs and don’t deal with any merchandise at all. You can see them listed in the groups at the end.
For all you BG fanatics like myself that sometimes have to pay for shipping, be sure to use Pirateship.com. MASSIVE UPS shipping discounts and UPS has proven to be the most reliable shipper by far. I’ve used pirateship for over a year and it’s magnificent for UPS shipping. You’ll thank me.
Yes, using it for many years. Prices always the same or better than eBay. Very rarely eBay is better.
Tim, Maxoutdeals has your quote on its home page, alongside a picture of someone who I’m fairly certain is not Tim Steinke. Take a look.
BEWARE! It is also a huge huge risk for a chase shutdown once they identify that the money you get/deposit is coming from A buying group..!!
(of course, only relevant if you are banking and depositing at Chase..!!).
(Also.. This comment is not meant in any way to reference any specific above mentioned groups, I only wrote this as a general note of caution ⚠️).
Do you mean buying groups or money orders? Buying groups will normally just push ACHs to your account, I’ve never heard of Chase doing any sort of investigation on the origin of those ACH payments (although massive amounts of money transfers in and out can be an issue on personal accounts).
Either way, IMHO, it’s best to avoid any banking with Chase if you’re doing hanky-panky with the cards.
Amazon no longer allows buying gift cards with gift card credit. That was a nice round trip while it lasted.
USA communication has been horrible. They delete tickets, stop responding, and take forever to “resolve” issues. Their ticket times were so long that it took over two weeks and tons of pestering for them to finally tell me “we didn’t get it” even though it was delivered with other packages that same day.
By this point, I would not be reimbursed by the shipper (if it actually was lost…) so I basically ate a loss of over $1000 because they will not respond to any communication.
This is exactly why I stopped using USA over a year ago. Their support was terrible. I’m going to try dipping my toes in again to see if anything has improved, but BE CAREFUL here to any NOOBs.
Check out buying group marketplace called Deal & Runner
Is there ever a concern about income taxes? Since the BG would be paying back cash which could get flagged by the bank or IRS? (I’m in Canada, but I reckon US laws would be similar about this)
The item you buy (merchandise or gift card) will cost you $X and the buyer group will pay you less than $X (say, $X – $Y). If you are lucky, you will break even. With gift cards, expect to lose about 10 percent on the face value of the gift card. You will be suffering a net loss and thus no taxable income. Nonetheless, you will want to file a Schedule C with your IRS Form 1040 each year to document your revenue, cost of goods sold, etc.
What you’re after in the deal is that the value of the points (and tier status benefits) is greater than your cost ($Y). Consider the process a different way of buying points and/or tier status.
Here is my experience with some of these over the past three months since I started using this technique –
In general, I have had no issues with Costco and Amazon sending shipments to these BGs above to their DE addresses. Walmart, BB and Dell get auto canceled.
I have also done spending worht 25k with some Canadian BGs that also reimburse taxes (since there are no tax-free provinces in Canada), mostly through AMZ Canada and there hasn’t been any issues whatsoever.
It’s also worth noting that when I first tried to send AMZ shipment to one of these addresses, AMZ shut down my account for violating their terms of usage, but conviniently never told me what the violation was. I didn’t think this had anything to do with the BG address and a quick google search revealed that this was more common than I thought. One of the reasons the members on flyertalk suggested was the possibility of multiple prime accounts for members at the same addreses. This seemed applicable to me since I had created a separare AMZ account for BG purchases and was planning on paying for prime membership on that, but AMZ by default gives you 30 day free trial. I tried to get that clarified with AMZ but they were not willing to help or provide more info. I opened a case with Better Business Bureau of my state and AMZ restored my account within 2 weeks of the complaint. Since then, I have been able to send 5+ shipment to three different BGs without any issues.