The Offer
Direct Link (the link should show you if you were targeted for this offer)
- Get 3x eBay Bucks (6% back) on purchases $50 or more on December 7th and December 8th.
The Fine Print
- Valid from 5 am PT on 12/7/15 until midnight PT on 12/8/15.
- Max $100 per purchase and max of $500 per quarter.
- See more details on eBay Bucks here.
How to Maximize
3x Bucks isn’t the best we see, but it times very well with the rollout of discounted gift cards released today. The most exciting deal is $100 Exxon for $92; add 6% and the portal to that one for an awesome deal. Other popular options include Exxon, Chevron, Hyatt, Petco, P.F. Chang’s, iTunes, CVS.
You can also buy full-price gift cards to merchants like Home Depot, Lowe’s and many other favorites.
Reselling Angle
A few of the gift card deals can make sense to buy even if you don’t need it yourself as they can be resold at a profit.
Reselling Exxon
- Pay $276 for $300 in Exxon gift cards
- Sell to Saveya for $270
- Get $16.56 in Bucks
- Get at least 2% from the portal, or $5.52
- Get at least 2% back from the credit card, or $5.52
- Net profit: $21.60 Nice!
Note that only Saveya is offering 90%. Should their rate go down, the profits won’t be as good. Also, note that it will cost you around $2 to mail in the cards.
Reselling Chevron
- Pay $285 for $300 in Exxon gift cards
- Sell to ABCGiftCards for $270.75
- Get $17.10 in Bucks
- Get at least 2% from the portal, or $5.70
- Get at least 2% back from the credit card, or $5.70
- Net profit: $14.25
This one is less profitable than the Exxon deal and if ABC lowers their rate it can wipe out the profit altogether.
Other Options
- DSW can be sold to Giftcardzen for 78% currently. Not bad, but a risk for devaluation there.
- P.F. Chang’s is something to look at as it can be resold for 74% or 75%.
- Jiffy Lube holds steady at 75-76%. Something to look at.
- Dave & Buster’s sells for 73%. Tough sell there.
Shopping Portal
Whatever you decide to buy, make sure to go through a shopping portal first. The best cashback rate is 2% from Shopathome or Splender.
A better option for some is to go through the Plenti shopping portal. Until December 9th, Plenti is offering 4x points on eBay purchases. I value these points at .8% giving the 4x a value of 3.2% – pretty good!
Plenti also has an online shopping offer (targeted?) to get 500 bonus points for making $100 or more in online purchases.
Looks like saveya completly pulled Exxon from being sold to them.
Shopathome is 1% for eBay now, no?
Hey Dan. Still showing 2% for me (as of 12/7 6:54pm EST), http://www.shopathome.com/ebay-coupons.html
Ah, I see. Sorry about that. They were at 2% last week and then dropped to 1% but now back to 2% for today only I believe (“Cyber Monday 2.0”)
2% now, Splender is also 2% as well.
SaveYa already lowered their ExxonMobil buy rate to 87.50.
Gas gift cards typically go back up after everybody has finished unloading them. I’d just hold them if all the resellers went down below 90%
Do ExxonMobil cards work overseas, e.g. at an Esso gas station or the like?
The gift cards issued by SVM have a disclaimer on the back that says: “Redeemable in the United States only.”
I apologize…I was looking at the Chevron one – the Exxon says: “The ExxonMobil Gift Card is redeemable for authorized products and services at Exxon and Mobil branded facilities.” So, probably not.
US only
Curious why you value Plenti points below 1 cent each? The inconvenience of not being straight cash and having to go through an extra step to redeem them? Unless you don’t have a car, gas is something everyone needs and you can redeem them at Exxon and get a full 1 cent per point value out of them. Just go inside to pay and ask for the exact amount you have in points, i.e. 12,430 points is $12.43 in gas.
Exxon is more expensive, and I lose 5% on the credit card.
Plenti works at Mobil too. In my area Mobil is typically cheaper than Exxon. You might want to check that out.
A lot of us have excessive amount of gas points/don’t drive a lot.
Unfortunately I’m maxed out on eBay Bucks for the quarter which makes most of these deals not worth while. Can’t wait for January 1st..
I had this problem too. Just kept at it. Delete the item, retype the cards. I got it to work most of the time eventually. Had to do it several times to use more than two cards, however. REALLY ANNOYING.
I’ve had the same issue. It says that the “coupon” can’t be applied, or it does apply it, but erases another card that was already entered that the system actually took! I called ebay and they said it was a known issue, but the rep probably didn’t even understand a single word I was telling them. I was told to use ebay.ca, because the old checkout system is still in place and it does work like normal. I’m just pissed because you aren’t earning from the portal or ebay bucks which makes it useless to buy most of the deals. It seems like it is a problem with their new checkout system. Everyone should call until their lines get so blogged down so they actually look into the issue instead of just letting it hopefully fix itself. I’m so sick of eBay’s workers (I refuse to call them customer support, because they are the farthest thing from it lol) They have no urgency to fix the problem because they just figure you will put your gift cards to the side, pay with your paypal account, and let your money sit for several months while they dilly dally around “fixing the issue”. I’m fed up with ebay and their dedication to their customers.
Lately I have been having trouble paying for purchases using Ebay GCs. Sometimes the system takes one or two, but when adding the third one removes the previous two and doesn’t take the third one. I have checked the Ebay GC usage and I am still under $2K for the past 90 days. Has anyone else having similar issues? If so, what can be done to overcome this problem?
You’ll actually need to look back further as the limit is $5K for the past 180 days.
Pay attention to ABC Giftcards if you’re planning to resale. They took away your cards but don’t pay you especially if you sold cards to them before. Last week, ABC Giftcards deducted around 200 bucks from the pay check they were supposed to send to me claiming a staple gift card I sold to them in August was invalid! I kept this card in a very safe place and didn’t use it. I called in Staples and the agent told me that gift card was used to buy HP ink and shipped to another state 8 days after I sold this card to ABC. They simply took away my money even without any investigation! Don’t risk your money just for 1% more profit.