
More to the Story behind Gift Cards
After seeing all of those gift cards for sale on eBay, it made me wondered. One thing that I know about the eBay sellers is that a lot of them are resellers. In another words, they would buy the products at some discounted price from some distributor and then sell them at some marked-up prices on eBay. That is how they make money.
So, where are the sellers getting all of those discounted gift cards? And, how much are they paying for them? One of the places where the sellers get them is from some kind of members-only shopping clubs. And, the sellers are paying just 80 cents on the dollar for them. Wow, what a deal!
Now, I figure, why not just join the shopping clubs and cut out the middlemen completely? Well, there is a membership fee. And, it is something like $100 per year. You can probably do better if you search around.
So, is it worth it to join? Well, that depends on how much you plan to spend. By being a member, you can get the remaining 10%. That means the breakeven point is about $1,000. The threshold seems low enough.
But, before you join, you need to make sure that the club has the gift cards of your favorite stores. Also, some clubs have limits on how many gift cards that you can get from particular stores.
It is called a "Spending Plan". It sounds cooler than a "Budget". Who wants to be on a "Budget" when one can be on a "Spending Plan"? Semantics aside, here is how I went about creating a "Spending Plan". Income I start by looking at ... Read
On the back of credit card statements, there is a section titled "Special Rule for Credit Card Purchases". It basically says that if you ever have any problems with the product/service and tried to resolve the problem with the merchant but to no avail, then ... Read
Imagine shopping at your favorite store and getting an automatic 10% off. This can happen. You may have notice those gift cards on eBay. Are they legit? Can one really buy them for about 90 cents on the dollar? They answer to these questions are ... Read
