To go along with the last post, on Merchandise Credit Is Not A Gift Card, there can be phenomenal deals online with all of the cash back portals. Hence my post on making plenty of points using your personal card instead of signing up for business cards.
Some of these deals you may run into a situation where you purchased a gift card and are trying to resell and someone already bought it from that site!
For example:
- You bought a Sears gift card on Plastic Jungle
- You sell Sears gift card to Cardpool
- I buy the Sears card from Cardpool
- I attempt to sell on Plastic Jungle
- Plastic Jungle will not accept because it came from Plastic Jungle
Fortunately, I have not run into that situation, but I can foresee that happening as I increase my spend in third party sellers. If I were to put percentages in the areas of spend, I would say I transact about 60% from primary sellers for my gift cards like Office Max, Staples, etc. And a 15/5 split on eBay and third party sites like Plastic Jungle and Cardpool.
My only advice to combat something like that is to build a certain risk tolerance into your calculation that you’re willing to eat unfavorable rates like I had to do from 87% to 84% to 79%.
