Author Topic: Automatically Sell Amazon Giftcards $50/day profit or $20k/yr semi passive gig  (Read 12230 times)

Setake

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MOD NOTE:
1) The company is no longer accepting new clients.

2) There's a lot of reasons to not do this. Read at least the first two pages of this thread for some of the reasons why. If you're still interested after that, contact the company (listed later in this thread) to see if they're accepting new clients.

/END MOD NOTE


[EDIT: They have stopped taking referrals for now. I'll update this once they open the program back up. I had no clue they only had limited spots. Sorry everyone!


Hey everyone, I am a long time lurker of these forums and I finally thought I could contribute in a meaningful way. So here it is!

I’ve been doing this side hustle now for almost a year. After seeing the tradelines thread it made me realize that you guys might lose this. They just opened up their referral program so I’m here to let you guys in on it! I have already set up a few friends and they are doing this without fault. They are extremely happy about it so far..


What is it?

You sell amazon gift cards automatically to a company who buys them for slightly more than you pay for them. They refund you automatically within hours. It works because you buy them cheaply using your amazon credit card 5% rewards.

This is my daily routine:

  • Go to amazon.com
  • Buy $10,000 worth of gift cards and send them to a user-specific email created by the company using an amazon credit card with 5% cash back. Bringing your cost basis down to $9500.
  • The company refunds you to your PayPal (they know who it is based on what email you sent the gift cards to) within an hour or two at 95.XX%, where XX is a variable rate based on supply and demand.
  • Paypal Auto-sweeps this money into a checking account every night.
  • Make the credit card payment from the checking account every day.
  • When rewards hit after the statement end date, redeem them to pay off credit card fully
  • The rate varies based on how many buyers they have for the gift cards and how many gift card purchases they need per day. It varies between 95.25% to 96.2%.

    This means you can make anywhere from $25 to $120 a day, simply for buying one item on Amazon and paying off your credit card every day. On average, I would say it’s around $40 a day. It very rarely goes above $50, but there were a couple weeks in April where the returns were at about $120 a day.
Why does it work?

This company has a ton of demand for amazon gift cards. The reason is because they run a separate department that has created a way for their users to drop ship items from amazon using eBay. They automate the process so that when a user buys an item on eBay, they process the order through amazon to ship it to the ebay buyer. (This could also be a great side hustle by the way, maybe for another post!)

[THIS SECTION IS UNDER REVIEW, It could be that they have no international play at all. As tralfamadorian pointed out, if there was an international play this would be considered money laundering which is most definitely illegal. I am doing more research on this as I type!]
So when international users want to get in on this drop shipping side hustle, they can not set up and pay for amazon items using an international credit cards. International users actually end up paying for all their amazon items using Amazon gift cards.
Suffice it to say, they have a ton of demand for gift cards.

The problem though is that Amazon has a limit to $10,000 of amazon gift cards per user per day. This means they need to have people essentially farming amazon gift cards to meet their demand.

They in turn split up the 5% credit card rewards between you, themselves, and the gift card buyer. I don’t know how much they sell the giftcards for, but I assume they make a healthy profit off this. (I wish I had thought of this!)

In the end though, everyone is happy:
  • You get a healthy ~$50 profit per day
  • They take some percentage of profit
  • The gift card buyer gets credit at a discount
.

What do you need to get set up?
  • Amazon Prime Membership
  • Chase Amazon Credit Card with as high of a limit as you can get away with. <$30k is preferable.
  • An account with the company. When you set one up they will give you the user specific email.
  • A PayPal account. If you want auto-sweep, you can convert a personal account to a business account and this feature gets enabled. There are NO FEES associated with these transfers at any point.
  • Ideally a Chase checking account to speed up credit card payments. Not a requirement, but helpful.
There are RISKS though:

When I set this up for my friends, they were extremely skeptical in the beginning. They had a few concerns, and this is how I address them.

  • First of all, START SMALL. Obviously you should not immediately send random people $10k out of nowhere. Start with $10, $100 or whatever you are comfortable with. Get used to the process before you do anything you aren't comfortable doing.
  • You are trusting this company to refund you the $95XX within a couple of hours. If they for whatever reason don’t refund you, you could potentially be out of luck. That said, there are a few ways to mitigate this risk if for whatever reason they don’t refund you:
    • If you catch it in time (probably within a day or 2, before they sell the codes and the user redeems them) you can regenerate the gift card codes and they will have no way of knowing what the new codes are. You will now have 10k in amazon gift card credit that you would have to deal with, but at least you would still have it and maybe get amazon to refund you.
    • If you don’t catch it in time, you can tell amazon that it was a fraudulent charge and try to reverse the gift cards
    • You can contact Chase and tell them it was fraudulent and hopefully they would reverse the charge
  • Your credit score will take a hit. You should NOT do this if you are planning any huge purchases in the immediate future. What happens is that over the month you can accrue massive numbers on this card. Even though you are paying it off daily as quickly as the money comes in, if the statement ends with a high balance on the card, your credit utilization will sky rocket. Some months, my credit score will take an 80 point hit just because it showed I held a $30k CC balance. In reality, I paid all 30k off the next day. The next month, my credit score rebounds to the high it’s always been at. That means that if I ever have a big purchase coming up in a month, I simply stop doing this for a while and my credit score will rebound. Easy peasy.
  • Taxes are slightly more difficult and might flag you for audit. PayPal will be reporting your earnings, and they will think your earnings are massive. If you do it every day of the year with maximum potential, PayPal will report your earnings at ~$3.50 million (365*$9,550). Your Schedule C will then in turn show massive expenses $~3.45 million (365*$9500).
  • Chase might catch on and cancel all your cards. This company has said that they have had 2 users (out of hundreds or thousands) have Chase cancel all their accounts with no repeal possible, so do this at your own risk.
  • Amazon might catch on and prevent you from buying any more gift cards. When this happens, you just say you are sorry and you can’t buy any more. Sad, but not the end of the world.
  • NEW ADDITION: The company is required to collect a W-9 from you, which will have your SSN. This is obviously a big deal if you don't want your SSN being held by someone you don't trust. Do your research and determine if this is something you are willing do do with this company. Here is what they say in their FAQ: We are required to collect a W-9 form from every user of []. This is a short form strictly for "information reporting" (source) and mainly contains your address and Social Security number. We need to keep this form on file internally, but we do not send this to the IRS.
  • NEW ADDITION: The_Dude brought up the potential risk of civil forfeiture. Read the article he linked to here. This has not happened to anyone that I know of doing this gig. I'll make sure to ask the company if they've ever even considered this as a possibility. A couple businesses this article talks about are all cash business with potential ties to international money (cash-only Mexican restaurants, convenience stores etc). I am still waiting for a response from the company on whether they have ANY international business at all. I'll update when I receive this.
FAQ:
  • Are there any fees associated with Paypal?

    No, all the transfers happen as if it were between friends and family, so no fees when they send the money to you, and no fees when you transfer to your bank
  • Why should I preferably have a <$30k credit limit in my card?

    All of the transfers take some time. Here is the way it happens:

    Day 1: You pay for the gift cards. - $10k credit card debt
    Day 1 (+2 hours): Receive PayPal reimbursement for $95XX
    Day 1 (Midnight): PayPal auto-sweeps to your checking account
    Day 2: Nothing happens. Transfers take 2 business days
    Day 3: Money hits your checking account. You can now pay off your credit card.

    This means that for 3 days, you are carrying a 10k credit on your card.

    If your goal is to do this every day, your limit needs to be 30K to account for this 10k/day float.

    Obviously, if you don’t do it every day at the full amount, you don’t need to have such a high limit.
  • How did you get such a high credit limit on this card?
  • 
When I applied, I initially got a paltry 5k credit limit, even though I have great credit and credit history. I ended up immediately calling them and asking for more. They bumped this up considerably but not all the way.

    To get the rest, I shuffled available credit from my other chase cards onto this card. You can do this with no repercussions or credit pulls. Just call up the chase credit card department and ask. The change is immediate.
  • How do I start?

    The most important thing: START SMALL. Obviously you should not immediately send random people $10k out of nowhere. Start with $10, $100 or whatever you are comfortable with. Get used to the process before you do anything you aren't comfortable doing. If you want to start, you can PM me here and I can give you a referral to the company. Once you set up that account, you can start setting up everything else as mentioned in the above section (What do I need?)
  • This sounds so risky. Why do you do this to yourself?

    Well, to be honest, it’s hard to turn down $50 a day for buying one item on amazon. Once everything is set up, it runs like a well oiled machine. 5 clicks, $50. Who can say no! Also, you realize that this company is raking it in and they will never go out of business. What they are doing is genius and I wish I had thought of it.

    I’ll add more as your questions come in!
« Last Edit: June 02, 2018, 09:03:48 PM by arebelspy »

Setake

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I've gotten some requests to share the FAQ that I keep referring to from this company. I have added it below:

What is [product]?

[product] is a tool developed by [company] to help crowdsource the gift card supply we use for our business. Demand is quite high and we need your help buying gift cards from Amazon at discounted rates.

The Amazon Prime Store and Amazon Chase Visa cards let you purchase gift cards at a 5% discount in the form of a statement credit. However, regulations limit the amount of gift cards sold to a single person to $10,000/day.

We will buy gift cards from you at some variable discount, which will always be less than 5%, and you get to keep whatever is left. For example, with today's 4.49% discount, you get to keep 0.51% of your order.

The process works as follows:

  • You buy gift cards on Amazon.com and send them directly to us. See the instructions tab for more details.
  • Within 1 hour of when we receive the cards, we'll send you payment for 95.51% of the gift card value via PayPal.
  • You cash out of PayPal into your bank account, pay off the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa card, and repeat as soon as you have more credit available. You keep 0.51% of the total GC value purchased.
Example:

    You buy 20 $500 cards for $10,000
    We PayPal you $9,551
    You pay off the $10,000 balance on your card
    At the end of the billing period, you get a statement credit of $500, keeping $51
    Rinse and repeat

Tax Information

We are required to collect a W-9 form from every user of [product]. This is a short form strictly for "information reporting" (source) and mainly contains your address and Social Security number. We need to keep this form on file internally, but we do not send this to the IRS.

Please consult a tax professional for more information about how to properly report your earnings. An approach that we've used has been to file a Schedule C and report your total [product] reimbursements in Box 1 (Gross receipts). Report the sum of your gift card purchases minus your total cash back as Box 4 (Cost of goods sold). Boxes 5 & 7 (Gross profit/income) will then accurately reflect your income from [product]. Although some sources claim that credit card rewards are not taxable, they may be taxable when they are used for business purposes.

If you have over 200 transactions per year through PayPal, you will receive a 1099 from PayPal (source).

FAQWhat do you need gift cards for?
[company] has relationships with some of the largest bulk Amazon buyers. They use gift cards to fund their orders, and so we sell them to those sellers at a discount. We typically buy our gift cards from large b2b Amazon gift card resellers (at 5%+ discount), and we use [product] to add more supply when we have particularly high demand.
I got a reimbursement, but it was for less than the amount of cards I sent.

We get a separate email for each gift card in the order. Sometimes, emails get delayed (either by Amazon or by Gmail). We wait 45 minutes for the cards to stop trickling in, and then group them into one reimbursement. Sometimes, the emails get delayed by more than that (we've seen up to 12 hours).

Please do not click "Resend" on a gift card on Amazon.com, as this will invalidate the old gift cards that we've already loaded into our system.

In rare cases, if it's been over 48 hours since you placed the order, and all of the other codes in that order say "Redeemed", you can click "Resend" on the one or two cards that haven't been sent (that you haven't gotten reimbursed for). This happens because Amazon sometimes fails to send all of the emails for that order to us, and you need to retry.
How do I know I'll be reimbursed?
We understand there's a fair amount of trust involved here, so if you have any concerns feel free to reach out to us! Shoot an email to and we can either get a call scheduled to answer any questions you have or even schedule a visit to the office in San Francisco so you can see what we're all about.[b]What are the downsides?[/b]    It's a few minutes of manual effort every few days to order the gift cards, pay off the credit card, and do the accounting.    We have had two isolated cases where users' Chase accounts were closed without reason and with no recourse. Although they got all their cash back issued, they are now unable to open Chase credit cards.
« Last Edit: May 31, 2018, 12:59:37 PM by Setake »

powskier

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$10 000 at risk for $50?

No thanks.

Setake

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$10 000 at risk for $50?

No thanks.
No worries! Everyone has different risk tolerances for sure. I started super small a year ago with quantities of $100 until I was sure about it. I’ve since done this process over 100 times and it’s always been reimbursed within 2-3 hours without fail.

Many of my friends have said the same thing, so I completely understand it!

sokoloff

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What about this is passive? (Other than farming for referral dollars as in this thread, which I do agree is passive.)

Setake

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What about this is passive? (Other than farming for referral dollars as in this thread, which I do agree is passive.)
You’re totally right actually... I guess if it’s something you have to do every day it’s not really passive. I’ll change the title to reflect it!

I also want to mention that I did make it truly passive because I wrote a script to purchase the cards automatically at the right time every single day and payoff the card as well.  This really has converted it into completely passive, but I just didn’t want to overload the initial post with too much info.

tralfamadorian

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$50 to launder money for some unknown international entity with the bonus option of being able to lose $10k/day?


Setake

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$50 to launder money for some unknown international entity with the bonus option of being able to lose $10k/day?
Tho company is not actually international. The only reason I mentioned that is because many people question why they have so much demand for gift cards.

The company is founded in San Francisco by MIT grads.

Padonak

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Setake

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You send the gift cards directly to the company.

The only reason I didn’t mention the company’s name is because I was following the model arebelspy used for his post. I assumed there were some forum rules about naming companies based off that.

This is probably largely why they seem so mysterious. I’m happy to name them here if there’s no rules against it! It might help to dispel some of that mystery.

The same company is one of the only ones who offer an API for ordering things on Amazon programmatically. They have many different pieces of software all related to ecommerce.

And yes you can know their address if you want to, on their website they even invite you to come visit them.

They are located in SF actually, probably really close to where I live. I’d be happy to do some recon if any of you would like!

Here’s their quote on their website:

How do I know I'll be reimbursed?

We understand there's a fair amount of trust involved here, so if you have any concerns feel free to reach out to us! Shoot an email to [] and we can either get a call scheduled to answer any questions you have or even schedule a visit to the office in San Francisco so you can see what we're all about.

solon

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Let me make sure I'm understanding this.

There is a company, that is not Amazon, that acts as a matchmaker, similar to the tradeline companies being discussed in other threads.
The people they are matching up are people like us, who are selling Amazon gift cards, and others who are buying the cards.
We are buying the cards at 95% of face value (because of the credit card cash back.
The buyers are buying at 95.25% - 96.2%, which means we make a profit of .25% - 1.2% of face value.
The company also takes a cut.

Does the company's cut come out of our profit?
Yeah, the Schedule C implications are enormous. Have you filed a tax return yet showing this income?

JLee

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This relies on violating Paypal's terms of service in order to succeed, yes? If you got one $10k payment as a normal payment you'd be hit with a ~$300 Paypal fee.

solon

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OK, so we don't send the cards to other people, but to the company.

Why doesn't the company buy their own gift cards?

Setake

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Yes I have filed. My 2017 taxes included this large income. There are in turn large expenses that offset this on your schedule C. I have not yet been summoned for audit, but if i does happen, this company provides a full excel with all your transaction history for the full year. You will at least be able to back up all the expenses and profits with concrete data, even though it will look fishy.

Setake

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OK, so we don't send the cards to other people, but to the company.

Why doesn't the company buy their own gift cards?

Exactly right. The reason they can’t buy their own is because of the 10k/user/day limit. They cant take out unlimited credit cards, so they are stuck into this one.

This is what they say on their website as to why:


What do you need gift cards for?

[] has relationships with some of the largest bulk Amazon buyers. They use gift cards to fund their orders, and so we sell them to those sellers at a discount. We typically buy our gift cards from large b2b Amazon gift card resellers (at 5%+ discount), and we use [] to add more supply when we have particularly high demand.


Setake

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This relies on violating Paypal's terms of service in order to succeed, yes? If you got one $10k payment as a normal payment you'd be hit with a ~$300 Paypal fee.

This is actually a really interesting question. I’ll dig more into it today and get back to you.

I’ve never had a problem where PayPal charges me a fee, even after doing this hundreds of times. I’ll call the company and get the details on how they structure the PayPal transfer to you.

Currently, I don’t think it’s in violation of their terms because the way the company structures the transfer to you. But let me call them and figure it out!

Setake

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Does the company's cut come out of our profit?

Their cut is structured like this:

1) they buy the gift cards from you at 95.XX.
2) they sell them at 96 or 97% of face value (the number is unknown to us)
3) they take the middle cut. Whatever the delta is from what they bought it to what they sold it.

JLee

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This relies on violating Paypal's terms of service in order to succeed, yes? If you got one $10k payment as a normal payment you'd be hit with a ~$300 Paypal fee.

This is actually a really interesting question. I’ll dig more into it today and get back to you.

I’ve never had a problem where PayPal charges me a fee, even after doing this hundreds of times. I’ll call the company and get the details on how they structure the PayPal transfer to you.

Currently, I don’t think it’s in violation of their terms because the way the company structures the transfer to you. But let me call them and figure it out!
https://www.quora.com/Why-not-claim-all-PayPal-payments-as-friends-and-family-payments

Quote
Because PayPal monitors all of the transactions, and merchants that are found to be using the system for commercial purposes without paying will lose access to the system.

tralfamadorian

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Tho company is not actually international. The only reason I mentioned that is because many people question why they have so much demand for gift cards.

The company is founded in San Francisco by MIT grads.

If it's a US company, then why doesn't it do its own Amazon purchasing with company credit cards?

Oh yeah, because they are setting up dozens of shill Amazon prime accounts to send items to their Ebay customers with prime shipping. Of course, this is against Amazon's TOS so these accounts get closed left and right. But the company is setting up all of these throw away accounts paying with untraceable gift cards. Well, untraceable to them. But they are traceable to the original gift card purchaser since they're the schmuck accepting all the liability from Amazon, PayPal, Chase and any applicable federal money laundering laws for a measly $50.

Between this, the pot business thread and the real estate guru scam thread, I feel like this.


Setake

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This relies on violating Paypal's terms of service in order to succeed, yes? If you got one $10k payment as a normal payment you'd be hit with a ~$300 Paypal fee.

This is actually a really interesting question. I’ll dig more into it today and get back to you.

I’ve never had a problem where PayPal charges me a fee, even after doing this hundreds of times. I’ll call the company and get the details on how they structure the PayPal transfer to you.

Currently, I don’t think it’s in violation of their terms because the way the company structures the transfer to you. But let me call them and figure it out!
https://www.quora.com/Why-not-claim-all-PayPal-payments-as-friends-and-family-payments

Quote
Because PayPal monitors all of the transactions, and merchants that are found to be using the system for commercial purposes without paying will lose access to the system.

Yeah that’s definitely interesting! It could be that they set it up in a different way. I’ll give them a call to check it out today.

Setake

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Tho company is not actually international. The only reason I mentioned that is because many people question why they have so much demand for gift cards.

The company is founded in San Francisco by MIT grads.

If it's a US company, then why doesn't it do its own Amazon purchasing with company credit cards?

Oh yeah, because they are setting up dozens of shill Amazon prime accounts to send items to their Ebay customers with prime shipping. Of course, this is against Amazon's TOS so these accounts get closed left and right. But the company is setting up all of these throw away accounts paying with untraceable gift cards. Well, untraceable to them. But they are traceable to the original gift card purchaser since they're the schmuck accepting all the liability from Amazon, PayPal, Chase and any applicable federal money laundering laws for a measly $50.

Between this, the pot business thread and the real estate guru scam thread, I feel like this.


This is from an earlier post in which I copied over from their website:

What do you need gift cards for?

[] has relationships with some of the largest bulk Amazon buyers. They use gift cards to fund their orders, and so we sell them to those sellers at a discount. We typically buy our gift cards from large b2b Amazon gift card resellers (at 5%+ discount), and we use [] to add more supply when we have particularly high demand.

———

This is NOT the biggest part of their business by far. They have tons of other software in the ecommerce area that leads to having this demand. That s their real business. They aren’t laundering money. This is literally just to supplement their current gift card purchasing power.

This is similar to the tradeline thread, where someone found a market for something that initially sounds scary and they are just filling that gap. In that thread, you also take on risk through various ways but it is mitigated through other ways. This is a very similar exercise in mitigating risk.

Again, everyone has different risk profiles. It’s totally up to you if you want to partake!

FINate

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Tho company is not actually international. The only reason I mentioned that is because many people question why they have so much demand for gift cards.

The company is founded in San Francisco by MIT grads.

If it's a US company, then why doesn't it do its own Amazon purchasing with company credit cards?

Oh yeah, because they are setting up dozens of shill Amazon prime accounts to send items to their Ebay customers with prime shipping. Of course, this is against Amazon's TOS so these accounts get closed left and right. But the company is setting up all of these throw away accounts paying with untraceable gift cards. Well, untraceable to them. But they are traceable to the original gift card purchaser since they're the schmuck accepting all the liability from Amazon, PayPal, Chase and any applicable federal money laundering laws for a measly $50.

Between this, the pot business thread and the real estate guru scam thread, I feel like this.



Hahaha...thanks for the morning laugh!

Padonak

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We need @sol to troll the OP

ditkanate

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    • ditka's dumb journal
ptf out of sheer curiosity.

charuhans

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Incurring huge charges on the CC daily and paying off the balance daily, for a Chase card. Sure!!

tralfamadorian

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What do you need gift cards for?

[] has relationships with some of the largest bulk Amazon buyers. They use gift cards to fund their orders, and so we sell them to those sellers at a discount. We typically buy our gift cards from large b2b Amazon gift card resellers (at 5%+ discount), and we use [] to add more supply when we have particularly high demand.

Okay, I'll get hooked into responding one more time for any MMM forum members who might be reading this and actually thinking it's a good idea.

There is a legal, rule abiding way for international sellers to do the Amazon to Ebay dropshipping game. They open a US subsidiary, which allows them to obtain a US checking account and credit card. When they have an Ebay sale, a computer program automatically makes the purchase on Amazon with a non-prime Amazon account, which is fine by Amazon TOS. There are quite a few very successful companies that do this.

Any company or entity that needs tens of thousands of dollars of gift cards is doing something they shouldn't and is shielding their identity and risk through the anonymity of gift cards. Whether the company the OP posted is the end user or the middleman is immaterial. The only digital fingerprints on those gift cards are going to be the original purchasers'. Consequences range from a lifetime ban from Amazon, lifetime ban from PayPal (and they can hold your funds for 180 days or pull them back if they believe they are tied to illegal activity), lifetime ban from Chase with a ding on your credit report to legal consequences for money laundering.

hgjjgkj

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What do you need gift cards for?

[] has relationships with some of the largest bulk Amazon buyers. They use gift cards to fund their orders, and so we sell them to those sellers at a discount. We typically buy our gift cards from large b2b Amazon gift card resellers (at 5%+ discount), and we use [] to add more supply when we have particularly high demand.

Okay, I'll get hooked into responding one more time for any MMM forum members who might be reading this and actually thinking it's a good idea.

There is a legal, rule abiding way for international sellers to do the Amazon to Ebay dropshipping game. They open a US subsidiary, which allows them to obtain a US checking account and credit card. When they have an Ebay sale, a computer program automatically makes the purchase on Amazon with a non-prime Amazon account, which is fine by Amazon TOS. There are quite a few very successful companies that do this.

Any company or entity that needs tens of thousands of dollars of gift cards is doing something they shouldn't and is shielding their identity and risk through the anonymity of gift cards. Whether the company the OP posted is the end user or the middleman is immaterial. The only digital fingerprints on those gift cards are going to be the original purchasers'. Consequences range from a lifetime ban from Amazon, lifetime ban from PayPal (and they can hold your funds for 180 days or pull them back if they believe they are tied to illegal activity), lifetime ban from Chase with a ding on your credit report to legal consequences for money laundering.

I think in the age of Trump, if you are worried about running foul of regulations you are worried about the wrong thing. No rules just right. Have fun.

Setake

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What do you need gift cards for?

[] has relationships with some of the largest bulk Amazon buyers. They use gift cards to fund their orders, and so we sell them to those sellers at a discount. We typically buy our gift cards from large b2b Amazon gift card resellers (at 5%+ discount), and we use [] to add more supply when we have particularly high demand.

Okay, I'll get hooked into responding one more time for any MMM forum members who might be reading this and actually thinking it's a good idea.

There is a legal, rule abiding way for international sellers to do the Amazon to Ebay dropshipping game. They open a US subsidiary, which allows them to obtain a US checking account and credit card. When they have an Ebay sale, a computer program automatically makes the purchase on Amazon with a non-prime Amazon account, which is fine by Amazon TOS. There are quite a few very successful companies that do this.

Any company or entity that needs tens of thousands of dollars of gift cards is doing something they shouldn't and is shielding their identity and risk through the anonymity of gift cards. Whether the company the OP posted is the end user or the middleman is immaterial. The only digital fingerprints on those gift cards are going to be the original purchasers'. Consequences range from a lifetime ban from Amazon, lifetime ban from PayPal (and they can hold your funds for 180 days or pull them back if they believe they are tied to illegal activity), lifetime ban from Chase with a ding on your credit report to legal consequences for money laundering.

Well this is for sure sufficiently scary sounding to fend off even me. I'll be looking into it and I encourage everyone to also do their own research.

What I am finding so far is that this isn't actually an international play by this company. Looking over their FAQ on their website, it doesn't mention any international business portion at all, and it may have been an extrapolation that I made in my mind. Indeed, their whole website never even has the word international, so I may have made that leap myself.

Thank you for the insightful comment, and I'll follow up with whatever I find.

Padonak

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What's the name of the company? There is no rule against naming the company on the forum.

frugalnacho

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Setake

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What's the name of the company? There is no rule against naming the company on the forum.

If that's the case,the company is called zinc.io. You can go see the website. They have a few ecommerce products. They do not list this as one of their products because this is sort of a back end thing for them.

For everyone still reading, I have added a section in the risk portion of my write up. Please go read this as this could be another sticking point with you.

Also, I have posted the company's FAQ in my second post on this thread. Let me know if any other questions!
« Last Edit: May 31, 2018, 01:04:10 PM by Setake »

frugalnacho

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What's to stop a married couple from both getting a prime account and doubling their spoils?  $40/day/person is like $30k/yr total.  Once you get it set up and running this seems like it has the potential to be more lucrative than the TL sales, and also much much higher $/hr. 

Setake

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What's to stop a married couple from both getting a prime account and doubling their spoils?  $40/day/person is like $30k/yr total.  Once you get it set up and running this seems like it has the potential to be more lucrative than the TL sales, and also much much higher $/hr.

Yes, it can be quite lucrative. I have actually set up my wife on this, but it hasn't seemed to work yet. She has the credit card now, but somehow she is running into MY gift card purchase limit. That means that if I do the 10k that day, she cannot do it, and vice versa.

I have recently changed her billing address to her parents, but it still flags it as a combined limit with mine. I am working to figure it out though!

The passiveness of this can get pretty crazy. I currently have a script running on a server that will auto purchase the cards for me at the right time intervals (It happens to be every 24 hours and 15 minutes). This means I never miss a day and I never have to think about it.

JLee

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I'm curious how much longer before you get banned by Amazon and/or Paypal.

Enough

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The only reason I didn’t mention the company’s name is because I was following the model arebelspy used for his post. I assumed there were some forum rules about naming companies based off that.


This is a good model - its a lot easier to get referral $$ when you don't share the company's name outside of a DM ;)

Frankies Girl

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I have come to believe there is a gif/quote from Ron Swanson that fits just about every situation.

Case in point:



« Last Edit: May 31, 2018, 07:27:31 PM by Frankies Girl »

nalor511

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Just filing that SchC with the IRS is going to invite a lot of scrutiny. Not to mention Paypal, Chase, and Amazon. No thanks.

Padonak

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Come on people, this is so frustrating!

Can't somebody offer a proper side gig opportunity to make a few clicks per day and earn 20K per year? I was hoping I could do that from a beach somewhere in Thailand while getting a massage (not the kind of massage you think about).

JLee

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Come on people, this is so frustrating!

Can't somebody offer a proper side gig opportunity to make a few clicks per day and earn 20K per year? I was hoping I could do that from a beach somewhere in Thailand while getting a massage (not the kind of massage you think about).

If side gigs were all that easy/lucrative/legal/risk-free I'd do a few few clicks a day and make $100k/yr for 15 minutes of work :P

Padonak

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Yes, I would just automate these clicks, set up a click farm and make billionz of millionz per day.

solon

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I applied for the Prime Rewards Visa, but didn't get approved! Don't know why, I have excellent credit, and I already have a Visa from Chase.

Setake

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I applied for the Prime Rewards Visa, but didn't get approved! Don't know why, I have excellent credit, and I already have a Visa from Chase.

That is VERY weird... Have you applied and gotten 5 Chase cards in the last 24 months by any chance?

Setake

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Come on people, this is so frustrating!

Can't somebody offer a proper side gig opportunity to make a few clicks per day and earn 20K per year? I was hoping I could do that from a beach somewhere in Thailand while getting a massage (not the kind of massage you think about).

If side gigs were all that easy/lucrative/legal/risk-free I'd do a few few clicks a day and make $100k/yr for 15 minutes of work :P

Honestly, this is why I posted this hustle. It has been working for me for the past year-ish, and that is literally all it is: 15 minutes of work which yield tons of side hustle money. There is some risk involved, but it is definitely surmountable and there are ways to mitigate it. It's very similar to the tradeline, in that it initially seems incredibly risky, but people have found ways around it that make it considerably less so. It also treads the line of violating some terms of services etc, just like tradelines.

There has been quite a bit of backlash, but a couple of people have PM'ed me. Hopefully they will see how easy it is and start being able to vouch for it.

If there truly is no appetite for it, I am happy letting this thread die, but I just thought I would give you guys the opportunity to check it out yourselves.

Also, I'd like to say that I actually appreciate all the scrutiny. It has helped me formulate new questions I didn't think about and hopefully everything comes back positive!


Car Jack

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Although I did a circle of eBay gift cards from gamestop to buy gamestop cards on eBay to buy eBay cards at gamestop with the last $5 back long enough to have to create 3 eBay accounts because I maxed their limits on each account........

This is sketchy as hell.  I'm out.

geekette

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I applied for the Prime Rewards Visa, but didn't get approved! Don't know why, I have excellent credit, and I already have a Visa from Chase.

That is VERY weird... Have you applied and gotten 5 Chase cards in the last 24 months by any chance?
The Chase 5/24 rule applies to all cards, not just Chase.

The_Dude

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I'd add civil forfeiture to your risks if you are doing amounts close to the $10k threshold.  Seriously.

google it and there are lots of articles on abuse of this system for the government to take your money without actually ever charging you of a crime.

Here is just one article: https://reason.com/blog/2017/04/04/irs-seized-17-million-from-innocent-busi

However, that article implies the IRS has reigned itself in.  Other articles claim this is still occurring and it's not just the IRS who perpetrates it. 

solon

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I applied for the Prime Rewards Visa, but didn't get approved! Don't know why, I have excellent credit, and I already have a Visa from Chase.

That is VERY weird... Have you applied and gotten 5 Chase cards in the last 24 months by any chance?
The Chase 5/24 rule applies to all cards, not just Chase.

I have applied for 3 cards in the last 24 months. Well, 4 cards now, counting the Amazon card I didn't get.

Setake

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I'd add civil forfeiture to your risks if you are doing amounts close to the $10k threshold.  Seriously.

google it and there are lots of articles on abuse of this system for the government to take your money without actually ever charging you of a crime.

Here is just one article: https://reason.com/blog/2017/04/04/irs-seized-17-million-from-innocent-busi

However, that article implies the IRS has reigned itself in.  Other articles claim this is still occurring and it's not just the IRS who perpetrates it.

Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I have added it to the potential risks section.

ketchup

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I applied for the Prime Rewards Visa, but didn't get approved! Don't know why, I have excellent credit, and I already have a Visa from Chase.

That is VERY weird... Have you applied and gotten 5 Chase cards in the last 24 months by any chance?
The Chase 5/24 rule applies to all cards, not just Chase.

I have applied for 3 cards in the last 24 months. Well, 4 cards now, counting the Amazon card I didn't get.
Amazon Prime card doesn't fall under 5/24.  GF got it last year and I'm pretty sure she was around 14/24 at the time.

tralfamadorian

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I applied for the Prime Rewards Visa, but didn't get approved! Don't know why, I have excellent credit, and I already have a Visa from Chase.

That is strange. Do you do tradelines?

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!