Major Changes to Giftcardzen Reselling

One of the popular options for reselling unwanted gift cards is Giftcardzen.com. Last week, they began numerous changes to the rules of selling gift cards on their site. Thanks to the staff at Giftcardzen for clarifying the details with us.

$300 Weekly Limit

Giftcardzen now has a hard limit of $300 in gift cards which you can submit per rolling 7-days. This means that you won’t ever be able to sell a gift card with a balance of more than $300. And you won’t be able to sell multiple smaller gift cards with a face value of more than $300 at a time.

After 7 days, the limit resets and you can sell another $300 worth.

Electronic Submission

Another change now if effect is that most gift cards can now be submitted electronically. You’ll get the same payout whether you submit the cards physically or electronically.

Previously, only bulk sellers were allowed to submit codes electronically; now anyone can submit codes electronically, within the stated limit of $300 per week.

As always, there will be a number of cards which need to be submitted physically, such as gas gift cards and a few others. The system will tell you during the sell process whether it needs to be mailed in physically and you’ll know that before confirming the order.

Bulk Sellers

Giftcardzen has now enforced must higher standards in order for someone to be eligible for bulk seller status. According to the rep we spoke to, you now need at least $30,000 in monthly sales to be eligible and you need a physical brick-and-mortar location as well.

Previously, there was no need for a physical location and you just needed $5,000 per month in sales to be eligible.

Note that the website seems to indicate that the minimum now is $20,000 and that you don’t need a physical location, but the rep we spoke to told us that you now need $30,000 and a physical location.

Payment

Payment from Giftcardzen is still in the form on a check (for non-bulk sellers), as it always was. The only small difference now is that the check will be issued more quickly when you submit gift cards electronically, since the check will be issued as soon as the order is processed and won’t need to wait for the mailing of the cards.

No real change here; just something to keep in mind.

Final Thoughts

Everyone will have their own opinion on these changes. In my view, it’s a net positive for us. I value highly the ability to submit gift cards electronically and this new move is a huge advantage.

Until now, only Saveya allowed electronic submission on most cards while Cardpool and Cardcash deduct 5% from the payout for electronic submission. Now we have both Saveya and Giftcardzen as options for submitting gift codes electronically. This is really a great addition both for selling e-gift cards and for selling physical gift cards more easily.

As for the new $300 weekly limit – obviously that’s not exciting, but the limit is really manageable. Think about it: you can sell over $15,000 per year by doing $300 a week. Sure, it’s easier to do it all in bigger orders, but since they allow electronic submission, the breaking up of the orders isn’t a huge ordeal. Saveya has a stated limit of just $300 or so per month and this Giftcardzen limit is significantly higher than that.

We’ve updated The Complete Guide to Selling your Unwanted Gift Cards for Cash to reflect the new rules of Giftcardzen.

HT: reader Wwllmm

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Diamond Vargas
Diamond Vargas (@guest_220901)
January 28, 2016 20:19

My limit was increased to $600 per week within the last couple of weeks. Don’t know when exactly, no notice given by Giftcardzen, just figured it out by testing a few sale amounts. Not sure whether it’s something specific to me (I’ve sold about $4k of cards to them without incident over the last ~5 months, never applied for any kind of bulk seller status), or whether they’ve relaxed the weekly limit in general. Would love to hear other data points, and thought it was worth mentioning.

On the downside, the mailing of their physical check payments has gotten progressively slower and slower. They changed their stated timeline from “2 to 3 weeks” to “3 to 4 weeks” back in November, and my last couple of payments have taken more than 4 weeks. And their seemingly arbitrary, vague “Your sale has been canceled” emails are pretty annoying. Frequently need to call to confirm some detail or another before the sale goes through, and their customer service representatives never answer the phone, always need to leave a message and wait for a call back.

Diamond Vargas
Diamond Vargas (@guest_221033)
January 29, 2016 12:11

Yes, they (or more likely the website programming) seemed to track the $300 weekly max very closely — to the minute even, which I noticed because I got into a routine of selling to them on Fridays. The website wouldn’t even let me price out a sale if it would result in exceeding the $300 limit. Notably, they calc the limit on sale proceeds, whereas SaveYa’s limit is on face value of cards.

A couple of the canceled sale emails were resolved when it turned out someone on their end had typed in the card incorrectly (can’t believe they don’t copy / paste), and another couple of times I wasn’t specific enough in the “Explain in detail how you acquired these cards” section on the sale page.

I get all the anti-fraud stuff but it seems pretty aggressive and anti-seller. When I buy cards from Giftcardzen, I pay them right away…

Al
Al (@guest_172768)
September 15, 2015 16:20

how do they know the origin?

Gunnie
Gunnie (@guest_168767)
September 7, 2015 13:43

As a heads up, Gift Card Zen cancelled my order because of the following.

“Our Fulfillment team rejected this order due to the card origins being from Raise.com. We are unable to accept because of how many times the card may have exchanged hands and is against our protocols for accepting sales.”

George Smiley
George Smiley (@guest_175367)
September 21, 2015 10:17

I was told the same thing. “For security reasons, we do not purchase cards that have come from other gift card resellers.”

Are other folks reselling giftcards from other resellers successfully?

joe
joe (@guest_167007)
September 2, 2015 22:05

How reliable are SaveYa and GiftCardZen?

J. Grant
J. Grant (@guest_168736)
September 7, 2015 12:00

Any ideas as to why they’re getting banned? Selling bad cards? Pushing beyond the $300 limit? Just curious 🙂

J. Grant
J. Grant (@guest_168872)
September 7, 2015 20:29

That’s ridiculous. No workaround such as different IP, address, email, bank acct?

Justin
Justin (@guest_166871)
September 2, 2015 12:24

Good changes. I still had my $200 Staples code from early August. CardCash kept rejecting it for some reason. I sold it to GiftCardZen this morning for 86% of value, which is way better than CardCash would have paid. I just got confirmation that the sale is complete and the check will be cut.

stvr
stvr (@guest_166835)
September 2, 2015 10:46

I applied to be a bulk seller with GCZ. The person I spoke with was rude and cynical about ‘miles and points’ people. Said he would get floods of cards he didn’t want or need. I’m sorry but if we’re snagging gas gift cards for 10% off face value and sending them your way, we’re not pests. Gas is gas buddy.

J. Grant
J. Grant (@guest_166861)
September 2, 2015 11:49

They were just jealous, that’s all. I find that when people are rude, it’s due to feeling inadequate.

Mike
Mike (@guest_166825)
September 2, 2015 10:22

Is the limit going to be strictly enforced? Even before I became a bulk seller on SaveYa they would normally let you go past the $300 limit. It would usually just take a day or two for someone to manually review your submission.

JB
JB (@guest_166857)
September 2, 2015 11:41

Good point! My B/S apps with Saveya keep on declining but I currently sold way more than $300/w to them. I really like the electronic submission as it saves a lot of time and the $2.04 for the mailing, adding to my bottom line. The “payment issued” email usually comes a few minutes after submission. If only they’d be actually mailing the check right away instead of waiting a few days that would be even better. Next time I’ll have to check GCZ as well.

Audrey
Audrey (@guest_166975)
September 2, 2015 19:59
  JB

Really? I have never been able to exceed the $300/month limit. B/S denied as well.

Audrey
Audrey (@guest_166992)
September 2, 2015 21:01
  JB

I have never been able to exceed $300/mo. System won’t let me proceed. Declined as B/S also however.

Rishabh
Rishabh (@guest_166806)
September 2, 2015 09:46

Saveya has a clear limit of $300 per week on my account. I sold $1000 gift cards last month to Saveya. GCZ has taken the SaveYa model.