As I begin forward with finding a second “home” to sell gift cards with, I could not help, but notice that all the gift card exchange sites have wildly different rates in which they buy gift cards. What does that mean? When gift card churning, you and I will receive better deals from the added competition. Take a look at the screenshot below from Gift Card Granny
In the past, you would not see 90.5% back for a gas card. In fact, it is almost always up to 90% for a gas card with the exception of Exxon and Mobil. Almost every site say “up to 92% cash back” and that is for Walmart. However, we now see Card Snagger offering 93% back for a Walmart card.
Target used to be 89 to 90% every where. Now, to win your business, Cardpool is buying at 91%.
Forget the extra 1%, let us look at the gigantic spread between some vendors. Look at Caribou Coffee and Whataburger. The lowest being 60% or 65%, respectively. The range for each is a spread of 18% and 15%. It is crazy how far some of these sites are trying to win your business.
Final Thoughts:
If you are practicing gift card churning, you already know to look for the best value. But does having an “allegiance” or a preferred gift card exchange site make any sense? With the wild ranges that the sites will buy, the idea of siding with one site at does not make sense. For most of 2013, I was a Cardpool bulk seller. The only benefits they offered were emails of when rates changed up or down and a preferable rate. When the rate went down, they let us know that there was a grace period for bulk sellers before it goes down. The vendor that they gave us a preferable rate is Nordstrom, at .5%.
Otherwise, buy and sell quickly. Sitting on cards or in the time it takes for them to arrive like on some of the Amex deals, caused the rates to go down and the deals no longer as lucrative.
Absolutely right! Neiman Marcus dropped below the sell rate of 85% and is not an attractive gift card churn at the moment
Watch out for CardSnagger – do some Googling about them before you think that extra 1% is worth it.
I find Cardpool is well managed and routinely has the best prices (or very close). It’s owned by Blackhawk Networks (who are the biggest gift card sellers – they are owned by Safeway) and thus you have some peace of mind you’re not dealing with schlock fly-by-nights. It’s a leap of faith to send your cards – could be a nice Ponzy scheme – build up loyalty, get lots of customers, and then disappear one day when everyone is comfortable.
Frankly, I would not be surprised if many of these gift card sellers are really fronts to launder money. Who’s checking where the cards are coming from? Nobody, but the reseller themselves. So you could have a bit of legitimate business and 90% coming from guys who go down to the local grocery and buy thousands of gcs with cash, then go resell – voila, you’ve now got “legitimate” money.
I’m not too concerned with which site I sell to as long as its listed on giftcardgranny. As far as the previous posters concerns about CardSnagger, I wouldn’t worry. The fact is top sites like, Cardpool, ABC, etc all have their share of negative reviews on the net. No surprise when you think about it consider gift card fraud. I’d bet a good majority of those people are pissed off criminals that are mad they weren’t able to launder their cards. I’ve seen a lot of sites come and go over the years and I’m sure it’s because they were so eager to please everyone that they accepted all cards and were burned by too many cards going bad that they went under. Carpool even sent me back a card I know it was legit as I bought it myself. Yeah, you can be pissed, but I’ve been selling long enough to understand that these lasting companies can’t afford to take risks with the slim margins it seems they operate on. Think about it peeps!