Updates & Musings from the Credit Card, MS & Reselling World
There is quite a lot going on today that relates to past posts or to things I think are worthy of sharing with you. While they don’t all warrant their own post, as a collective there is a lot of useful information!
Galaxy S6 Portal Dispute Update
Back in June I wrote about an amazing deal I got on the Galaxy S6 phone. While prices have dropped since then, I was able to get the phone for $460 plus I was supposed to also receive 18% cashback through Saving Star. Unfortunately they only paid $57.50 instead of the expected $82.80. A similar deal returned a week later and I know some of you purchased it and had the same result.
At that time I contacted Saving Star who in turn contacted Choxi. Then I waited. Over the past few months I have followed up a few times and was always told they were working on it. Then today I finally got the following good news, “Choxi has reported that the credit for your order should have posted automatically. Because of this, I have credited your account for that purchase, which you’ll see post in a day or two.” Victory!
eBay $5 Final Value Fee AMAZING Promotion
Have you ever seen a promotion and known it was good, but didn’t really think about how good it was? eBay recently had a promotion where you could sell up to 5 phones for a $5 flat fee. While I did end up selling four phones total, between my wife and I we could have sold 10. Man I wish we did.
During eBay’s recent 5X eBay Bucks sale I went out on a limb and purchased two Galaxy S6 Edge phones for $450 each after eBay Bucks. Since those phones cannot be sold as new on Amazon, I decided I would resell them on eBay. Well, I resold one and kept the other, but that is a story for another time.
Last Saturday I listed the phone for a fair price on eBay and it sold the same day. While the normal final fee would have been about $53 (10%), I only paid $5. Unlike with Amazon, I did have to ship the item to the purchaser myself, but I saved a ton of money. Now if I only had done it six more times! Let’s hope that promotion returns soon!
Citi ThankYou Premier Minimum Spending
For a few days recently Citi had an increased 60K offer for the ThankYou Premier card. My wife applied and was approved and gladly met the minimum spend. Or did she? The 60K offer actually required $3,500 in spend whereas the 50K offer requires $3K spend. Easy to mixup and I did both in my mind and in my records.
Thankfully we always try to confirm that we have met all requirements for a bonus with the bank, so we sent a secure message asking why the bonus didn’t post when the recent statement closed. No one has responded, but I did mysteriously receive this email shortly after sending the message:
As soon as I read the $3,500 number, I knew what had happened. Perhaps sending this email was a little passive aggressive, but I actually think it is funny and effective. Either way there are two good takeaways from this situation. First, always keep good records and second, it is always a good idea to confirm you have met all of the requirements. In this case I did have records, but they were wrong. Having a fail-safe is always a good idea.
Amex Platinum HHonors Gold
Yesterday I covered the new HHonors Gold Amex Platinum benefit. While I don’t have much new to report, I did receive an email today confirming my account was upgraded through March 31, 2017! It took just about 24 hours for the upgrade to post! Not bad. If you haven’t done it yet, then head to yesterday’s post for the link and instructions.
Conclusion
All in all, not a bad set of updates. I learned to trust my reselling instinct, found out that Saving Star is very reputable even if it takes months to resolve an issue, reinforced my best practices of keeping records and also contacting the bank as a backup and obtained yet another meaningful hotel status! Good stuff or as I like to call it, just another day on the job!
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Thanks for the update on Savingstar/Choxi. I was able to email today after reading your post and they gave me the good news as well! The CB is in my account now
I’m glad it worked. Definitely made for a great deal!
I think that the e-mail that you got from Citi was not related to you contacting them. I got one today for the Citi HHonors card I signed up for a few weeks ago. Exact same format, reminding me of the terms and bonus.
You were right. Just convenient timing. They did respond to my message today!
How I can get 60K Citi deal?
It only lasted a few days and expired unfortunately.
I was going to sell my note 2 on eBay using that $5 final fee but after I received the $100 off ANY sale $100 or more I realized that was the better route. For me it’s only about a $10 loss on the other deal because it’s an older phone. Waiting for October 11 to roll around and capitalize on the upcoming targeted promo.