My First Reselling Experience: Fail

This is a guest post from Leana, who used to write at Miles For Family. Today she is sharing her first experience trying to resell giftcards, at the end we’ve also included best practices for reselling giftcards so you can try to avoid the problems Leana encountered. 

It’s obvious that nowadays, re-selling in this hobby is the “thing” to do. Since I’ve always wanted to be one of the cool kids, I just had to try it for myself. Plus, I needed to meet minimum spending requirements on my new CSP card in order to make  a redemption  through United MileagePlus program.

Fortunately for me (not) Doctor of Credit has reported on this super duper fantastic deal on Exxon Mobil gift cards via Ebay. You could get up to three $100 cards for $90 each. Long story short, once all was said and done, you could potentially turn a $100 profit. OK, it wasn’t actually that lucrative, but did seem like a no-brainer. Well, for those with a brain, that is.

I’m hoping that my experience will be a cautionary tale as well as introduction for those who are thinking about getting into this whole gift card reselling craze.

The Anatomy Of The Fail

1.  I buy gift cards on Ebay after going through a shopping portal. All is well. I get the cards in the mail after just five days. Ready to break into reselling, y’all!
2. I get an offer on Cardpool to get $92 per card. They also provide a free shipping label (no tracking, an important detail). I’ll take it anyway!
3. I ship all three envelopes to Cardpool. I’m officially one of the cool kids.
4. One of the cards arrives after only 4 days. I get paid for it. So far so good. Except… there is no sign of the other two envelopes. Remember, they were all shipped at the same time.
5. Ten days later and I’m still waiting.
6.  What the heck??? I look for a way to contact Cardpool, but there is no phone number. You can only communicate via  email. Not good, but I shoot a message asking about my cards. After 1.5 days I get a reply that they don’t got them. I write back saying how could this be if they were mailed at the same time. I get a reply the next day asking me to provide a tracking number. Oops! I don’t got it because you didn’t provide it with your prepaid envelope!!! I get an email back asking me again for the tracking number.
7. Two weeks has passed and nothing changed. Did I mention that I forgot to write down the numbers of each card? I contact the Ebay seller asking him if he happens to have them. No response.
8. I go through 7 stages of grief over my $180 (well minus cashback and Ebay bucks, eyeroll).
9. I contact Exxon Mobil and the rep says all communication has to go through the Ebay seller (who is not responding, of course). I ask him if I could talk to a supervisor, and he says he is the supervisor. Oops again. I turn on my Eastern European accent and apologize profusely for doubting his rank. He says he would try to help resolve it and would shoot an email to the Ebay seller who just happens to be their authorized dealer. Glimmer of hope.
10. I get a message from the Ebay seller who says  he looked up my gift cards’ balance and all three still had $100 on them. He zeroed  out each one, reissued them and sent new ones to my address. Except, of course, I already got paid for one of them. So, instead of being one of the cool kids, I just became the scumbag seller who sold Cardpool an empty gift card.
11. I contact Cardpool asking them how I can pay back the money I now owe them. It’s been a few days and  I’m still waiting for response and there is no phone number to contact them. Hey, I just might turn a $100 profit on this deal after all!

The Lessons

1. Reselling is a pain  in a butt.
2. Cardpool stinks. They are fine when you buy gift cards from them, but as far as selling goes, stay away. Their customer service rep took  1.5 days to respond and lacked reading and comprehension skills. Make sure company you resell to has  a phone number. I still have no clue what happened to those two gift cards, but my guess is they got misplaced in their processing center.
3. Keep good records! Yes, it sounds obvious, but make sure to write down the numbers of cards, take screenshots just in case etc.
4. Mail cards via certified mail. It costs extra, but this will be your only proof of delivery.
5. If at all possible, try to buy cards that can be resold online. Sure, the payout is usually smaller, but you avoid extra shipping costs and the worry that something might happen to them in-transit. Obviously, I didn’t have this option for Exxon Mobil   cards, otherwise I would take it.

Final Thoughts

Well, I’m a complete idiot! Now I have these three Exxon Mobil gift cards and the nearest station is 35 minutes away. I’m thinking about bribing my husband to use them when he is out-of-town for work. I’m sure that will cost me.  I could even try to re-sell them through another company and hope for a better outcome. Overall, I think I’m done with reselling.

P.S. I ended up using AAdvantage miles for those award tickets, so I didn’t really need United miles after all.

Thanks again to Leana for submitting this guest post, make sure you go check out her blog here. She’s not actively posting anymore, but this is still a wealth of information on her site you can read through. I think there are two main lessons we can learn from Leana’s experiences:

• Start small, even though it was possible to purchase three $100 gift cards, Leana might have been better served just starting with one gift card. This would’ve meant she would only have been stuck with one gift card rather than three in the event that something went wrong.
• Always keep complete records. I usually take a picture of the front and back of each gift card so that I have a record in case the gift cards go missing. 

One of the great things about making mistakes is that they are a great learning opportunity. What else can we learn from this experience? Let us know in the comments, please keep it civil and constructive.