eBay Gift Card Profit Opportunity
eBay is once again running a gift card promotion with a number of different products on sale. Additionally, you can get 2% cashback from Splender for your purchase and many members have been targeted with 4X (8%) eBay Bucks. This combines for a very nice savings.
While you can find the full list of discounted cards here, among the cards on sale are Sears and Kmart gift cards. These cards are interesting for two reasons. First, you can use them to stack with other discounts and promotions for a large savings or you can sell them and make a profit.
Sears & Kmart Cards on Sale from PayPal Digital Gifts
- Get a $200 Sears Gift Card for only $170 – Email delivery
- Get a $100 Sears Gift Card for only $85 – Email delivery
- Get a $50 Kmart Gift Card for only $42.50 – Email delivery
The Math
Let’s take a look at the $200 Sears gift cards. There is a limit of 4 cards and they are sold by PayPal Digital Gifts. PayPal limits the number of cards you can purchase from them in a given time period, so you may not be able to purchase all four if you have recently purchased other cards from them. With that said, here is what the math looks like for the purchase of 4 cards.
- Cost of 4 X $200 cards: $680
- 2% portal cashback: $13.60
- 8% eBay Bucks: $54.40
- 5X Ultimate Rewards with Ink: 3,400 ($.01 cash value each)
- Final Cost: $578 ($144.50 per card)
- Discount of face value: 27.75%
As you can see, even if we only value Ultimate Rewards points at their cash value of $.01 each, you are saving about 27% off of the face value of cards.
Extreme Stacking
To start, extreme stacking is Frequent Miler’s term and not mine. It involves putting together a number of discounts and opportunities to achieve a great savings. One of the methods is starting with discounted gift cards. By starting with 27% off you are well on your way to a big savings at these stores. Frequent Miler already has a page setup to walk you through more ways to save at Kmart & Sears. It is highly recommended.
Arbitrage
If you don’t want to shop at Kmart or Sears then you can of course buy these cards and re-sell them on the secondary market. For example, SaveYa will purchase Sears e-gift codes for 84% of face value. With these cards all being digital, the process of buying and selling takes less than 10 minutes. If you use the example above you would be paying $578 and would receive back $672 for a decent profit. If you value Ultimate Rewards at more than $.01 each then your profit is even greater.
Conclusion
The Sears and Kmart cards along with some of the other discounted gift cards present another way to save. Whether it is just getting a decent discount at Sears, or dipping your feet in the gift card arbitrage game, I think there is definitely a lot of opportunity with today’s sale.
Did you buy gift cards today? What is your plan? Let us know in the comments!
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Exact same issue here as the above. I have been with Paypal for a long time now and don’t want to delete and redo my account. Doesn’t seem to be worth the effort. I had to verify identity- got sent through loops. Tried new browser same issue. I would assume like other forms of arbitrage they are trying to close the loophole. Make hay while the sun shines.
[…] often cover eBay gift card deals on Miles to Memories and over at Frequent Miler’s Quick Deals. Unfortunately lately many readers have run into […]
footnote: ebay’s web site currently features an ncaa tournament hook which reads:
“The madness starts here”
(really)
Shawn, must echo the complaints here with Ebay/Paypal . Yesterday, wasted an hour calling and waiting…. then my single transaction was approved — and I thought all was well. Made another transaction four hours later — and it was ok. But when I go back in this morning to make more transactions, NOPE….. same #@&*# error. Had to wait til 8:00 a.m. est to speak to a paypal rep…. Oh, she was friendly too — saw the security question, but then here’s where it gets utterly bizarre:
She tells me that I have to wait 48 hours from the time of the first security check…. (after the current promos expire) I believe the Drew TIF response would be:
*blinking….
So I’m documented as a good customer, and then that’s apparently not good enough. I asked to speak to a supervisor….. and a very polite gentleman comes on and sounds sympathetic, and he vaguely indicates he’s put in a note to try to improve my transaction experience. (have no idea what that means)….. But then he actually says that he has no idea why they put a 48 hour hold on such matters. (ps, I have a 830 fico, so who knows what’s afoot)
I’ve been around e-commerce long enough to remember the nightmares of Paypals early years — and because of that, I avoided even shopping at ebay (while doing thousands in business at amazon and elsewhere)….. This really irritates.
Same here with PP endless loops, no checkout possible. Waste of time.
Any way to get around the purchase limit for Paypal Digital Gifts? I seem to have purchased the max number of items I can buy in a 10 day period. Also, what’s the trick to actually getting these gift card sites to buy your digital codes? So far I have tried 5 times with SaveYa, ABC Gift Cards, and Cardpool and they have denied the codes every time!
Same problem you’re having, Christopher – SaveYa denied me due to a fraud algorithm. Granted, I’m a new seller, but still …
PPDG is a joke. PayPal is selling the gift cards … and denying our ability to pay via PayPal. I’ve spoken to two different reps today to no avail.
Yup same issue here. Transaction refused.
GOD DAMNIT!
The mess of ebay/paypal is killing it..
We’re not able to process your payment using your PayPal account at this time. Please try again later.
The whole Paypal security process makes these deals almost not worth it anymore. I spent 30 minutes trying to get my orders to go through and I’ve only been able to purchase 2 Sears cards. I’ve had to type in a text message code at least 20 times now, my account got locked out due to “suspicious activity” and they blocked my payment method, once I got it unlocked/unlimited, I tried to purchase again and had to go through another 3 prompts for phone call codes. Then, when I’m finally able to switch payment to my Ink card, it goes to process and tells me it could not verify my identify and craps out telling me to call them. Seriously, Paypal has the most inefficient security system of any online processor I’ve used.
It is strange that the Sears deals seem to have more of these issues than the others, but PPDG really has so many issues.
I can’t even buy 1. Getting endless verification loops from PPDG
Had same issue two weeks ago. Endless verifications, progressing from confirming identity by text message, then phone calls, then eventually wouldn’t process an order entirely. Switching browsers, incognito mode, different computers – all same issue. Gave up, but would like to know if anyone else encountered and fixed this problem.
Just spoke with eBay CSR who said this is a known problem. Switching browsers helps sometimes, but not always, per CSR. He kept getting same error codes using IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari. Said “try again later” sometimes it works.
Had the same problem with my wife’s account. Tried everything but it won’t be fixed. Sometimes 1 transaction will go through and the next one won’t. Had to delete the PayPal account n start fresh. Now it seems to be working fine.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Hopefully others will have the same success.
retried with just one $200 GC in the shopping cart, using the Chrome browser on my cell phone. went through ok. tried again a few hours later for one $100 GC – failed again in random computer browser but worked again on my Android cellphone. pain in the neck though…
Will PayPal Digital Gifts sell 4 of each Sears/KMart gift card? Or will you get orders canceled?
No I believe the limit is 4 of any type of gift card within a week although I haven’t seen that confirmed 100% yet.