I wrote in my first update to the 20kChallenge that eBay saved me a piece of the second $10,000 that I need to spend. I purchased almost $5,000 worth of physical gift cards when they had the 5x eBay Bucks bonus going on and this helped me hit the $500 per quarter in the eBay bucks that you could be eligible.
When the cards arrived, it took me about 30 minutes to open all the envelopes, scratch off the PIN number, have them entered into Excel, and loaded into Cardpool and have them sold electronically. This is a far cry from when I spent 6 hours trying to sell on Cardpool. After I loaded the cards into Cardpool and hit submit, I encountered a screen that I have never seen before:
I couldn’t believe what I saw. There was absolutely 0 chance that I was going to keep that in one order and submit the gift cards to mail.
The Extra Time:
If you spend enough time with Cardpool’s system, which is an antique compared to the likes of Giftcard Zen or Raise. With that error, I started to click on the “Remove” link and each time I clicked on it, the page refreshed adding time to the entire process. After enough cards were removed, Cardpool was going to accept the cards electronically! That’s awesome, right!? I lost count how many I removed before the functionality returned. Another problem with Cardpool’s system came up. You cannot tell what gift card is in the line item when it’s entered into Cardpool. On a related note, you can’t even tell what gift card number is associated per order number. Pro tip: write the order number to each gift card on a Post It when you create individual orders per card.
So I had to remove all the gift cards to restart at a clean slate. I broke it down in to 5 separate orders and had to copy and paste from my spreadsheet back into Cardpool all over again. Cardpool needs to step up their game with a true bulk sales upload and not this:
What This Taught Me:
This 30 minutes was worth it for the next time. Don’t load $5,000 in one transaction. Break it down so not to repeat it again. I didn’t expect this to happen as this was my first “big” order to Cardpool since they lifted the fee for selling electronic gift cards.
I wish Cardpool would accept me as a bulk seller… Just received close to $8000 in GC last week and it looks like I’ll have to liquidate through Raise because Cardpool doesn’t like me.
Thanks for the tip, though. If I ever do get accept as a bulk seller on Cardpool I’ll keep this in mind.
Definitely keep it in mind! Cardpool has some pretty competitive rates
Why doesn’t Cardpool like you? I barely sold anything through them and they instantly accepted me as bulk within 15 minutes of applying. Same with my friend too. The bulk sales department seems to be pretty good about responding to email very quickly .
I complained to Cardpool about their ridiculously bad bulk system and poor payout ratios offered. Was told they knew about problems but had no plans to change anything and to effectively pound sand. I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything else since they are owned by Blackhawk…
Oh I hate their bulk system with a passion too. I only use them when I absolutely must, unfortunately, the last few months they’ve had the best rates and became using them is a must. I’ve brought up a few issues with it and they told me “we’re working on it” but I haven’t seen anything come out of it.
“On a related note, you can’t even tell what gift card number is associated per order number. Pro tip: write the order number to each gift card on a Post It when you create individual orders per card.”
I remember we complained about this the other day. 😉 So annoying! Love the pro tip though. I need to start doing that from now on.
Since I don’t get free electronic redemptions like you do, I did have to submit all the cards by mail, but I made 10 separate orders in order to have enough stamps for Priority Mail. Post Office reprimanded me for using the clear plastic sleeve to put the stamps in though…they said it’s only for international shipments.
Well, crossing my fingers nothing goes wrong…!
In 2014, Cardpool STOLE.. blatantly just outright kept and stole 2x $50 Target gift cards that I owned. My address and info was all verified. I had sold to Cardpool three times before in 2013. This blew my mind as over a year later things have not been rectified by Cardpool.
I’m sorry to hear that – outside of their user interface, I’ve had a pretty positive experience with Cardpool