My brother told me his coworker purchased a gift card on eBay, verified the funds, and left positive feedback to the seller on eBay. Almost immediately afterwards, the seller cancelled the gift card and my brother’s coworker was left holding a $0 gift card and lost money on the purchase. I am not sure if he followed through with disputing the credit card or filing a claim with either PayPal or eBay, but I have been thinking and below are my thoughts.
A couple of pointers that I have picked up on how you can better protect yourself:
- If the card can be linked to an account:
- Call customer service to see if card has been registered and is still registered
- If it is still registered, contact the seller to unregister, else you will not leave a positive feedback on eBay until it has been done
- If it’s not registered, you can register in your name to attempt to protect yourself from fraudulent use and report a lost or stolen gift card
- Call customer service to see if card has been registered and is still registered
- If the card can’t be linked to an account:
- See if you can transfer the value to a different card, this will move the funds to a card number that you can trust, which would be a different gift card number and pin in case the seller will try to pull a fast one on you
Don’t forget to read the guide that I posted from Gift Card Churning Sanfu. It provides solid advice for a buyer on eBay.
I sold two cards to Plastic Jungle not doing the above. After filling out the information to Plastic Jungle, I realized I should have transferred the funds to a different card. Buying gift cards on eBay includes a lot more risk than purchasing through other retail channels, but the reward and savings can be higher creating a lower cost per point.
A couple more pointers:
- Make sure whatever gift card you want, is the right one. I placed a bid for $300 (max of $335) on a $382 value card on a retailer I did not want and won it. While I’ll be losing $14 on the sale, not high monetairily, percentage wise it was over 10% and causes my average cost per point to spike at 5 cents per SPG point
- Keep in mind the best value you can sell for from GiftCardGranny.com and use that as your max bid price
- If you can upgrade, then you’d want to increase the max bid. For example as of writing this, Sears max is 84% on GiftCardGranny.com, however, they also sell Shell which goes for 89%. If I were to purchase a Sears card the max I would pay would be 89%
- Also keep in mind the shipping costs on the auction if applicable
- Some gift cards are available to be sold immediately and you do not need to mail in the card. All things being equal, choose the best site that gives you the highest return on the electronic exchange. Currently, Cardpool pays you less if they accept a card electronically. Plastic Jungle pays the same regardless if paid via PayPal or check.
- Both sites pay via PayPal, but if you are like me and are only verified with a bank account, your monthly withdrawal limit is $500. That being said, if you need the money quickly or hit the maximum withdrawal are buying gift cards on eBay, do not redeem online and request a check. As mentioned in PayPal My Cash & eBay Bucks, PayPal will deduct from your cash balance. You cannot change funding method until your balance is 0.
- Use sites like TopCashBack (my referral) or BigCrumbs (my referral) to gain a few extra percentage points. TopCashBack currently has the highest for Plastic Jungle and has one for Cardpool
