Tip: Free points

[Paddy55]

Risk/Reward?

 

[paultiffen]

Check out the blog the Frequent Miler he does this a lot mainly when there are large cateogry bonuses. I remember him talking about selling tablet computers through Amazon when a store there had a promo for 12x points.

Million Mile Madness: buying, selling Kohl’s - Frequent Miler

This is really just an extension of finding liquidity in anything you can buy on credit and sell for cash (or get reimbursed for) such as business expenses, booking concert tickets for a group, buying gift cards etc.

 

[get me outta here]

Check out the blog the Frequent Miler he does this a lot mainly when there are large cateogry bonuses. I remember him talking about selling tablet computers through Amazon when a store there had a promo for 12x points.

Million Mile Madness: buying, selling Kohl’s - Frequent Miler

This is really just an extension of finding liquidity in anything you can buy on credit and sell for cash (or get reimbursed for) such as business expenses, booking concert tickets for a group, buying gift cards etc.

Interesting link showing pie chart w' 516K points for cc sign up.

 

[burmans]

Check out the blog the Frequent Miler he does this a lot mainly when there are large cateogry bonuses. I remember him talking about selling tablet computers through Amazon when a store there had a promo for 12x points.

Million Mile Madness: buying, selling Kohl’s - Frequent Miler

This is really just an extension of finding liquidity in anything you can buy on credit and sell for cash (or get reimbursed for) such as business expenses, booking concert tickets for a group, buying gift cards etc.

If you could regularly get 12x or 20x bonuses this would clearly be a good idea but thats just not whats on offer in our market. No point really in suggesting this "could" be a good idea, the questions is whether is really is a good idea, which has to take into account Australian conditions.

 

[paultiffen]

Yeah I agree I thought the original idea wasn't great to be honest. There a couple that could work here if shipping from overseas go get points from the BA estore or the AA store that could work. Thought I'd point the readers in the direction of that blog mainly.

 

[RWJ777]

Yes, i was going to add that the best way to not get your cc/PayPal account frozen or a rather unpleasant phone call about what exactly is going on would be only to do it once or twice, or to keep it going for longer would be to establish a network of like minded people to 'buy and sell' off each other...

PS i'm sure in the history of the internet schemes such as this have been thought up and probably established, for example, to click on people's websites and banner adds to rack up views and click throughs, and that one or two monitoring systmes have probably been worked out...

You cynical thing, you're not suggesting eBay data mines are you??!!

 

[casanovawa]

As with most things involving money on day 1 the interenet/websites were created and on day 2 scammers/tricky fellows would have started to work out how they could game it/scam it...

For companies to make a profit or stay in business by about day 3 they would have started to think about how do we put some controls on this... And everytime they heard a pudding guy story or the Australian Amercian Express story or the recent NAB story, the inclination to put some more controls on would have gone up a few notches...

 

[Yoz]

It also begs the question as why not get a friend to 'list' items on ebay and you "buy" them through paypal using your credit card. Friend simply reimburses what you paid and you make sure he is not out of pocket from a fee perspective. So all it would cost you is the ebay fees.

I've made a post about this on the AFF forum here:
http://www.australianfrequentflyer....ortunities-in-australia-48278.html#post779583

I'm almost certain this is viable. It's just finding (or creating) portals to do this that will not raise too much suspicion. If I shoved $200K through my business randomly and refunded it shortly after it would definitely look strange.

 

[ricee007]

I've made a post about this on the AFF forum here:
http://www.australianfrequentflyer....ortunities-in-australia-48278.html#post779583

I'm almost certain this is viable. It's just finding (or creating) portals to do this that will not raise too much suspicion. If I shoved $200K through my business randomly and refunded it shortly after it would definitely look strange.

Not viable through EBay... given fees are in the range of 5-10%.... and points are worth well less than that.

 

[Yoz]

Not viable through EBay... given fees are in the range of 5-10%.... and points are worth well less than that.

Avoid eBay. Just go with PayPal which charges about 30c + 1.5% if your SME turns over a remotely reasonable amount or 30c + 2.4% if it's fresh.

Your friend could purchase things from your online store and have them refunded via direct deposit (to avoid tax implications) sixty days after as PayPal refunds cannot be issued after this time.

If you have a card that offers 1.25 QFF per $1 then you're effectively paying 1.2c per QFF point (at 1.5% PayPal fees)

Assuming you can redeem above 1.2c per point then you have a net gain. I.e. You would be better off doing the above than paying for a first class ticket.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Interesting link showing pie chart w' 516K points for cc sign up.

There are many good reasons to not life in the USA.

However one of the "perks" is that there are a huge number of cc offers for sign ups and so not that difficult over there to earn $0.3 to 1.0 million FF points a year in sign-ups alone.

I would have a field day if I had access to USA cards....

In Australia there are less offers and they tend to be less generous, including often higher card fees which lessen the real effective FF rate gained.
But offers do present, but bounce around a lot. A year ago I earnt over 500K in sign on fees, but am anticipating this year to be somewhat lean.

However offers will come again. cannot say when...but yes it will always be less that what you can get in the USA.

 

[Saab34]

What if one was to buy say 3 $1000~ Ipads from BigW and return them a few days later?

 

[ComeFlyWithMe]

What if one was to buy say 3 $1000~ Ipads from BigW and return them a few days later?

Most merchants will only credit back to the card they were purchased on, which will take the CC points back, and the EDR points are linked to the sale, again taken back.