A number of portals have added fine print to their exclusions lists for eBay. Previously eBay branded gift cards and bullion were excluded, now on some sites (e.g eBates, BeFrugal & Upromise) all gift card purchases are excluded from earning cash back. Topcashback doesn’t currently have this exclusion. eBay was also recently pulled from all Cartera portals and you can no longer purchase third party gift cards with eBay gift cards.
It looks like eBay are really intent on eliminating people reselling gift cards for a profit, I’d assume if this is the case that you will no longer earn eBay bucks on gift card purchases in the future as well – but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. eBay also often make changes like this based on upcoming promotions they are planning – so it might just be they are planning a big gift card sale and don’t want to be paying out portals on top of that.
Thanks to reader @havemeier for making us aware of this.
Does BeFrugal still payout on GCs after the fine print was changed?
Check this out https://www.doctorofcredit.com/ebay-stops-portal-payouts-daily-deals/
Does anyone know when upromise stopped paying on eBay gift card purchases? Upomise cash back takes so long to post I have no idea which gift cards I should expect cash back on.
Does anyone know what percentage of Ebay’s sales are gift cards? I would have thought it was substantial. Gift cards are the only thing “expensive” I’ve ever bought on the site, and I would think that would be true for many others. They had a niche that I would have thought would be profitable. Now, they’re pretty much trashing that business.
It never ceases to amaze me how self-centered people in this hobby are. You honestly believe gift card resellers make up a substantial portion of eBay’s business?
In 2015 the eBay Marketplace (eg eBay.com, eBay.ca, etc) had 6.1 Billion dollars in revenue. That’s not sales, but eBay’s revenue from those sales (listing fees, final value fees, store fees and listing upgrades). 60% of that $6.1B was non-US generated revenue.
Total sales were $82 Billion to 162 Million active buyers.
Some examples just from eBay.com (not international sites)-
– every second 3 auto parts are sold
– every 11 seconds an iPad was sold
– every 15 seconds a “major appliance” is sold
There are over 1 Billion individual listings on eBay at any given moment. As I type this comment there are 6,098 individual listings in the gift card category.
Thank you for speaking up. I was reading the whining and just about to wake these folks up!
Iconsumer does have the antigift card language for a while though, even if it hasn’t been enforced. It even specifically mentions giftcardmall as an exclusion.
Fuck ebay in the ass with a ten foot pole
Normally I roll my eyes at such comments, but in case I’m with you on this one. Add some girth to that pole and hope it’s splintery too and we’re talking.
Been going to town buying tons of $50 BB gift cards at $45 to resell to earn 5x UR. So far iconsumer has paid out 1.3% back on them.
It is Bull. I had good gas savings at krogers and paired my ebay gift cards with Bullion.
Not anymore though it’s ridiculous, now I’m done.
Considering that Paypal Digital Gifts was just hacked and could possibly ending up costing them millions of dollars, I wonder if the gift card changes have anything to do with that.
Getting bleaker and bleaker unfortunately. Iconsumer just tracked my AA GCs though hopefully they’ll stay
Well I hope all these involved consumer crack down parties get what they wish for and watch as gift card sales fall to basically nothing while a huge supply glut emerges. I predict in the next two months or so you’re going to see some serious mark downs on gift cards as these re-sellers start to panic that their inventory is not moving. I have even noticed increased inventory of ebay gift cards at Kroger since this happened. I wonder if they even considered the downstream implications of detonating the reseller economy.
hopefully they’ll start selling elsewhere, eBay sux.
There must be a financial advantage to having eliminated it. I know personally, my purchasing has dropped a LOT. A drop in the bucket for them I’m sure though.