This past Saturday I posted a great offer: Up to 14.5% off Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  This week only, OfficeMax has a deal where you can buy two $25 Nook or Kindle gift cards and get $5 back.  That alone amounts to a respectable 10% discount. Since the cards can be used at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, respectively, this is a great deal.  Depending upon how you pay for the cards, you can do even better:

• American Express business card with OPEN Savings: 5% back on purchases of $100 or more at OfficeMax (until June 15).
• Chase Ink: 5 points per dollar at office supply stores
• American Express SimplyCash card: 5% cash back for office supplies plus 5% back with OPEN Savings.  That amounts to a 19% total discount!

Visits to OfficeMax on Sunday were mostly disappointing.  OfficeMax hadn’t yet figured out how to actually ring up these discounts.  A few people managed to get the discounts anyway, but others left empty handed.

Problem fixed

OfficeMax fixed their register issue.  They now have a sheet of paper with a bar code that applies the discount when scanned.  I’ve heard from a number of people who have successfully bought a bunch of gift cards with this discount.  A few stores limited people to no more than 6 cards, but most stores had no limit.  I walked out of a local OfficeMax yesterday with 40 gift cards!  Today, my mom (AKA Mom Miler) bought 20 cards at an OfficeMax near her!

Finding cards

The main problem you’ll face now is that many stores are sold out.  I highly recommend calling before making a trip.  Once in the store look near the e-book reader displays as well as at the gift card rack.  They tend to put e-book gift cards in both places.  Also, ask a manager if there are any more.  I only found 8 in the store before I asked a manager who dug up 32 more for me!

Which card to use?

If you have the SimplyCash card, that’s clearly the best option.  Otherwise, the Ink and the Amex business card options are very close.  With the Amex cards you get 5% back plus the usual 1 point per dollar from your card.  With the Ink you get just the 5 points per dollar.  If you value points at the Fair Trading Price of 1.31 cents each, then each option is about the same.  Go with whichever card gives you points that you value the most.

A reader who goes by bitachu tipped me off to this upcoming OfficeMax sale.  Starting tomorrow and until May 12th, you can buy Amazon Kindle or B&N Nook gift cards for 10% off.  Specifically, they advertise that you will save $5 when buying two $25 gift cards.  This is interesting because, I believe that Kindle gift cards can be used for any Amazon.com purchases and that Nook gift cards can be used for any Barnes & Noble purchases.

Double dip the discounts with OPEN or Ink

It’s not clear yet whether OfficeMax will have a per person limit, but if they allow at least 3 sets to be bought at once, you can increase the discount by using an American Express business credit card with OPEN Savings.  This will give you a 5% statement credit for all OfficeMax purchases of $100 or more.  It’s nice of OfficeMax to offer this deal before the in-store OPEN Savings benefit goes away as I reported yesterday.  When you stack a 10% discount with a 5% discount, the total discount comes to 14.5%.  Not bad!

Alternatively, use a Chase Ink credit card to get 5 points per dollar at office supply stores!

One of my favorite tricks for saving money while increasing credit card spend is to buy gift cards at OfficeMax using one of my American Express business cards.  Amex business cards come with a perk called OPEN Savings.  With this program, you automatically receive rebates in the form of statement credits when using your card at certain merchants.  With OfficeMax, you currently get back 5% of any purchases of $100 or more (see image).

I regularly stop by my local OfficeMax to buy gift cards totaling $100 or more. If you can find gift cards you can really use, this can be a big win.  Even $200 Visa gift cards with $6.95 fees are a decent deal: After 5% cash back, you end up with 1.7% in savings.

Sadly, though, this deal is coming to an end.  A friend who goes by the handle greek2me sent me this notice that he received in the mail with his SPG card bill:

Starting June 15th, in store purchases won’t count!  Since OfficeMax doesn’t sell gift cards online (other than their own), this will effectively kill the gift card gravy train.

On the other hand, they will start giving 10% back for purchases greater than $250 made online.  This could be quite lucrative if/when OfficeMax carries Free After Rebate products, especially if we stack this discount with points or cash back from a shopping portal.  Also, OfficeMax frequently sells items with 100% back in rewards.  Any time they have enough of these to total $250, I’ll let you know! 

I also wonder what would happen if we bought OfficeMax gift cards online and then used them in store.  Would they allow purchase of other gift cards using their gift card?  It’s unlikely, but you never know.  I guess it’s time to add new experiments to the Frequent Miler Laboratory to-do list!

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• In case you somehow missed it, today only you can buy a $10 Amazon gift card for only $5!  Hat Tip to RhondasBuzz.com (I would have provided a link, but her site appears to be broken right now).  View the deal here: https://local.amazon.com/palm-beaches (or any other Amazon Local location).
• Reader John W tipped me off about an awesome cash back site called TopCashBack which offers better cash back rates for gift card purchases and resales than ShopAtHome, MyDealsAndCoupons, etc.  As a result, I’ve updated the post Gift cards: buy low, sell high, get cash back.  If anyone is in the process of buying and selling gift cards, you should take a look as the cash back rates are better through TopCashBack.  (disclosure: I’ve used a referral link here which will give me a whopping $5 if you click through, signup, and make a purchase).

Last month Nordstrom ran a promotion in the British Airways shopping portal in which they gave 36 miles per dollar to people who signed up for the promotion and made their first ever BA shopping portal purchase, and made that purchase through Nordstrom.

As I reported earlier, I bought approximately $4000 worth of merchandise with the intent to sell it for as little loss as possible.  The difference between how much I spent and how much I got back from reselling was my cost.  In order for this to be a good deal, I wanted the cost per mile to be less than 1 cent.  Specifically, I targeted .5 cents per mile as a really good deal. 

Selling Approach

I had bought 10 watches and 7 noise cancelling headphones.  Rather than deal with trying to sell and ship all 17 items individually, I decided to use a service called “Fulfillment by Amazon”.  I signed up for a seller account and shipped all of my stuff to Amazon.  They take their usual seller fees and also charge for storage of the items.  In exchange, they handle all of the details of making each sale, and shipping the items. 

So, how did I do?

With my original pricing, I was on track to meet my target of acquiring BA miles for .5 cents each.  Truthfully, though, I became a bit impatient and put the items on sale to sell them quickly.  They all sold in one weekend and I ended up with a somewhat final tally of acquiring BA miles for .67 cents each.  It was still a very good deal and I was happy with that.  But then Amazon made a big mistake…

Amazon’s Error

Of the 10 watches I sent to Amazon, Amazon somehow sold 24 of them!  I opened a ticket with Amazon’s seller support telling them they had sold 17 of the 10 items (this was before they sold 7 more), but was told the following:

Greetings,
Having researched your account I could see that you have sent 10 units but total order shipped for this […] is 17 and I could see that all the items are shipped and the payment is already posted to your account. As all the orders has been fulfilled and there is no fulfillable quantity in your account we would not able further investigate on this issue.
You would receiving the payment for all the 17 orders.
Thank you for selling with Amazon,

No, Amazon, Thank You!

What’s Next?

I fully expect that Amazon will eventually figure out the error and come back to collect their money.  And, of course, I’ll readily return it.  It does reduce my confidence in them considerably though.  If they can accidentally pay me too much, they can just as easily accidentally pay me too little in the future.

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Yesterday I described how it may be possible to buy and sell items from Nordstrom in order to effectively buy British Airways Avios miles for as low as half a cent each.  Please see this post for details.  I also promised to write a post describing how I went about finding the best items for resale.  This is that post.

WARNING: I am not an expert at this.  I’m barely even a novice at this!  I have one and only one experience in buying and selling multiple items for the purpose of earning miles (see Mileage run shopping results).  So, while I will describe my process, you should not think of this as expert advice!  It is just one guy’s approach.  Hopefully some readers who are better at this than me will chime in with better advice in the comments below.

The Goal

The goal, for me, is to find items that will resell easily for as little loss as possible.  I think of the total loss as the total price paid for miles.  For example, if I buy $1000 worth of merchandise at Nordstrom for 36 miles per dollar, I will receive 36,000 miles.  If, after selling this merchandise, I have a total loss of $180, then $180 is the price I paid for those 36,000 miles.  In order to calculate cost per mile, I divide the total loss by the total miles earned:  $180 / 36,000 = $.005 = .5 cents per mile.

Expenses

When planning to resell items, it is important to factor in all of the expenses you will incur:

• Sales taxwhen buying items (unless you are lucky enough to live in a no tax state!)
• Resale discount.  In order to sell your items, you will most likely need to heavily discount it from the amount you paid.
• Selling fees.  If you sell via EBay or Amazon, for example, they will take a hefty cut of your resale price.
• Shipping costs.  Unless you pass along the shipping costs to your buyers, or you sell locally, you will have to cover shipping to them.

If you Google for “eBay seller calculator”, “Amazon seller calculator”, etc., you’ll find web sites that can help you calculate your total profit (in this case, total loss).  Use these tools to estimate your loss and make sure that the final cost per mile is something you can live with.  If you don’t think you can end up with a final cost of less than 1 cent per mile you probably shouldn’t do it.

Items I look for

I look for items that meet the following criteria:

• Lightweight and small:  I like to offer free shipping and I don’t want to pay a fortune for shipping to my buyers.  Cameras, headphones, tablet computers, jewelry, watches, etc. are examples that fit this criteria.
• Good price: I look for items that sell for the same price (or less) on Amazon.com.  If an item is readily available through Amazon at a much lower price then there is little possibility that I can resell the item without taking a huge hit.  As I learned from DeltaGOLDflyer, in many cases it is possible to force a good price by using a merchant’s price match guarantee.  I haven’t ever done this, though.
• Consumer Electronics: I prefer to buy consumer electronics because both EBay and Amazon charge lower selling fees for items in this category (for fixed price sales).
• Ratings.  I look for items that get very good ratings/reviews: 4 stars or higher.
• Popularity: I want items that will resell easily.  Luckily Amazon.com has lists of best sellers in each of their departments.  For example, here is an example of Amazon’s best seller list for computers & add-ons.  I try to make sure that things I buy are in the appropriate best seller list.
• Resale value: This one is key.  I look for items that resell for as close to the purchase price as possible.  One way to do that is to search for the item on EBay and then filter the results to items that are “new” and to “completed listings”.  The results will show in green the items that sold and for how much.  In red are the items that did not sell.  Ideally most of the items in green sold in the ballpark of what I was hoping for, and hopefully the items in red were way overpriced.
• Competition: Uncheck the “completed listings” box on EBay to see how many people are selling the same item.  If there are too many, the market may be too competitive to be successful.

So, that’s about it.  I spend a lot of time surfing the merchant’s web site looking for items that might fit the criteria listed above.  I grab model numbers and search for them in Amazon and EBay to research their popularity, resale value, and competition.  Then, finally, I go with my gut: does it make sense to me that people would buy this from me?  Is this a cool/desirable product?  In the end, I take a deep breath, take out my credit card, and spend.

If you have other strategies for finding good items for resale, please comment below!

Win a Nook!

Reminder: Until Feb 14th, you can win a Barnes & Noble Nook Color simply by adding a comment to our ever growing story. Visit this page to participate!

You are probably aware that you can earn 1 extra mile per dollar spent at Amazon.com by going through Hawaiian Airlines online shopping portal.  That’s not bad, but here are a few ways to do much better:

Chase Freedom:

In the first quarter of 2012, gas stations and Amazon.com are the 5X bonus categories for the Chase Freedom card.  As long as you register for the promotion, until the end of March anything you buy at Amazon.com will be rewarded with 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar, up to $1500 for the quarter.  After the first quarter, not all is lost.  Take a look at the Freedom’s bonus category chart:

• Q1 (January – March): Gas stations and Amazon.com
• Q2 (April – June): Groceries and movie theaters
• Q3 (July – September): Gas stations and restaurants
• Q4 (October – December): Hotels, airlines, Best Buy and Kohl’s

Q1 is already covered.  In Q2, note that groceries are on the list.  According to this Amazon.com page a number of grocery stores carry Amazon.com gift cards.  So, from April to June, rather than buying from Amazon.com directly, go to your grocery store to buy Amazon.com gift cards.  After you apply them to your Amazon account, all future purchases will default to using the gift card credit (this will work for regular purchases, download movie rentals, subscribe & save purchases, etc.)

In Q3, I think you’re out of luck (unless you saved up on gift cards from earlier), but in Q4 you can go to BestBuy to buy more Amazon gift cards!

Chase Ink Bold:

The new Chase Ink Bold offers 5 points per dollar for purchases at office supply stores.  Both Staples and Office Max carry Amazon gift cards according to this Amazon.com page.  So, using your Chase Ink Bold, visit one of those stores and load up on Amazon.com gift cards.

American Express Business cards

Most, if not all (?) American Express business cards give you American Express OPEN Savings.  This means that, for purchases at certain merchants, you get money credited back to your account.  One example is OfficeMax in which you receive 5% back for purchases of $100 or more.  By buying Amazon.com gift cards at OfficeMax using your Amex business card, you can save 5% on all Amazon purchases!

Citi Forward

The Citi Forward card offer 5 points per dollar for restaurants, books, movies and music.  Probably because of the “books” category, Amazon.com purchases receive 5 points per dollar!

Other Cards

If you hold a credit card that offers bonus points in certain categories such as groceries, drug stores, office supplies, etc., then check out the list of stores that carry Amazon.com gift cards.  Find a store that qualifies and use your card to load up!

Icing on the Cake

Once you have loaded up on Amazon.com gift cards, don’t forget that you can still earn Hawaiian Airlines miles for your purchases!  Make sure to sign up for their HawaiianMiles frequent flyer program and then visit Amazon.com on their online portal before making any purchases.

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NOTE: Since this post was originally written, US Airways no longer offers miles for shopping at Amazon.  Also, Hawaiian airline miles have droppe to 1 mile per dollar.

Others have previously posted this, but I think this is worth a reminder.  Both US Airways and Hawaiian Airlines have shopping portals that award miles for Amazon.com purchases that are initiated through their portal.  US Airways gives 1 mile per dollar spent at Amazon, whereas Hawaiian Airlines offers 2 miles per dollar.  These bonuses are over and above any miles earned from using a reward credit card for the purchases.

The Hawaiian Airlines deal has a few benefits worth noting beyond the double miles:

1. Hawaiian Airlines miles can be used for booking award flights on other airlines: Delta, Continental, Virgin Atlantic, and Korean Air
2. Hawaiian Airlines miles can be transferred from person to person for free if you have a Hawaiian Airlines credit card.  This can be a huge benefit if you have multiple family members or friends with small account balances.  Combine them together for an award flight!
3. Hawaiian Airlines miles can be transferred to Hilton points: two Hilton points per mile! So, since you get two miles per dollar from shopping at Amazon.com, you will essentially get 4 Hilton points per dollar if you choose to use your miles this way.

So, before shopping at Amazon, remember to go through one of these portals to earn extra points!

Hawaiian Airlines portal link: http://emarket.hawaiianair.com/mall/info/hawaiian/Amazon?afsrc=1&search_query=amazon

US Airways link: http://usairways.skymall.com/mall/info/usairways/Amazon?afsrc=1