Selling Phillips 66 Gift Cards
A couple of weeks ago SVM Gift Cards on eBay came out with an interesting gift card deal. The deal is actually still available if you want it. Anyway, you can purchase up to 3 $100 Phillips 66 gift cards for $90. eBay Bucks and portal cashback also applies, so this is a decent deal overall.
After purchasing, the question becomes what to do with these cards. For me, the answer is simple. There are no stations in my geographical area that accept them, so they need to be sold. I paid $90 for each card, but earned 1% through a portal and another 8% since I bought during a 4X eBay Bucks promotion. My cost per card is thus around $82.
Before I go any further, these cards are interesting in another way. While the front of the card is branded to Phillips 66, these cards are also good at 76 and Conoco stations. In fact, all three logos are on the back of the cards. So the question then becomes how to sell them.
Resell Rates
According to Gift Card Granny these are the rates I can sell a Phillips 66 card for:
But what if I could somehow sell these as a 76 or Conoco card? After all they will work at those stations. Well here is Conoco:
That is worse, so it doesn’t matter. It gets quite interesting though when we look at 76 rates:
Wow! 76 cards can be sold for 92% to Cardpool, ABC Gift Cards and Gift Card Rescue. Wait, Gift Card Rescue?!? I haven’t really heard of them before. We’ll get into that later, but lets look at selling this as a 76 card.
Selling as 76
I have reached out to Cardpool to see if they will buy the Phillips 66 card as a 76 card, however I doubt they will and I haven’t yet heard back. Both Cardpool and ABC Gift Cards have a separate rate for Phillips 66 vs. 76, so it doesn’t make sense for them to buy a Phillips 66 card at a 76 rate. My guess is the difference in rate has everything to do with the branding.
Then there is Gift Card Rescue. When you search their site, they have a listing for Phillips 66 alone. For that they pay 87%. But they also have another listing for Phillips 66/Conoco/76 Gas that pays 92%. This card has all of those logos, so there is no reason it shouldn’t qualify.
So here is the difference on their site:
Based on this, I would confidently sell my cards to Gift Card Rescue at the $92 rate. The 92% SKU has the Phillips name and my card has all three logos on it. Win. Right?
Who Is Gift Card Rescue?
Well I don’t just blindly send in hundreds of dollars of cards to a company, so I decided to research Gift Card Rescue. What I found was a little troubling. On Reseller Ratings they have a .03/10 (yes .03) with 44 reviews. The BBB gives them an A-, but they have 83 complaints in the last 12 months. While I can’t really find any reviews that say they rip people off, there are a lot of reports of payments taking forever and other issues.
To be fair, I do a lot of business with Cardpool and SaveYa. Cardpool has a 1.96/10 on Reseller Ratings and GiftCards.com who owns SaveYa has a 1.51/10. Gift Card Zen actually does a little better with a 3.89/10. The only two resellers I could find with decent ratings are Raise with a 7.04/10 and CardCash/ABC Gift Cards with a staggering 8/10!
The Purpose of this Post
Ok this post sort of devolved into a Reseller Ratings comparison, but there is a point. First, I want you to know that you may be able to sell these cards for 92%. Secondly, I want to crowd source this a bit to see if anyone has had experience with Gift Card Rescue.
The gift card business is tough and based on the information I uncovered, most companies have a poor reputation. I have done dozens of transactions with Cardpool and SaveYa and have had nothing but great experiences, but their Reseller Rating would indicate that they are terrible companies. I don’t want to write off Gift Card Rescue based on these reviews, however a .03/10 is incredibly low. That is why I am turning to you.
Conclusion
I know a lot of you have these cards and are trying to figure out what to do with them. This is just a reminder that safety should always come into play when making a financial transaction. Always do your research when selling gift cards, because the best rate may or may not be the way to go. In this case, the jury remains out. Hopefully some of you can share your Gift Card Rescue experiences in the comments!
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Sold my Philips 66 cards to ABC as 76 cards and they accepted them without issue
[…] blogs like Miles to Memories have expressed some concern over Gift Card Rescue because of their abysmal 0.11/10 Reseller […]
[…] other day I wrote about the Phillips 66 gift cards and how Gift Card Rescue was paying 92% for them. Based on a dismal Reseller Rating I was hesitant to sell cards to Gift Card […]
As far as Phillips and the GiftCardRescue dilemma, it’s definitely an interesting situation and I’m also personally tempted to sell these three $100 gift cards to them. It’s not such a large order that I’d be stressing myself silly but it is an extra 5%ish return, which in gift cards as you know is huge.
Considering someone else is waiting on GCR I’ll wait for their data point. Otherwise I’d probably sell it in a batch I already have going to ABC.
Shawn,
Has Cardpool responded back to you yet?
Yes I did hear back last night. It all depends on the branding. Whatever brand is on the front is what they will buy. In this case it is Phillips 66.
Those ratings are totally unreliable. ABC/CardCash are nothing but scammers based on my experience. GCZ has been the most professional to deal with (although dealing with their supposed “bulk order” people is a joke).
The only one I have any confidence in is Cardpool as they are owned by Blackhawk Networks (the issuer of a huge number of these gift cards). Blackhawk is a publicly traded company and was recently spun out of Safeway (who then sold themselves to a big hedge fund who also owns Alberstons).
Think people are making a huge mistake worrying about a few percent trying to scalp a few dollars, when the real issue is if you’ll ever get any money for your cards at all.
There is zero regulation of these companies, so it’s Caveat Emptor!
It is funny how everyone has had good and bad experiences with different companies. You are right that it is important to be cautious.
I was almost going to post the exact same sentiments.
Thus far I’ve had good experiences with ABC (and am a bulk seller now w/ ACH payout option). My first transaction with GCZ, which is still in the works, has taken 2 business days and STILL they haven’t verified my small $200 sale of gift cards. I emailed them yesterday also and no response. Yet, I’ve read good things about GCZ.
The one company that I don’t understand that’s sometimes thrown under the bus is Saveya/Giftcard. I’m a bulk seller w/ Saveya. They pay faster (ACH) than any other company IME and they give me free FedEx shipping labels when my orders are $500+. I have a personal contact who has been nothing but friendly and helpful.
Things are all “fine” – until there is a problem. Then you quickly find out which companies are scammers. ABC/Cardcash has ATROCIOUS customer service – I had to file complaints with the BBB and the AG before they would pay me for cards they admitted they had received – they just thumbed their noses at paying me $2500 for 3 months – and never answered emails/phone calls. Hold times on the phone were regularly 4-5 HOURS….and then they’d hang up after several hours and you’d have to try again. M Effers!
Go in with your eyes wide open – this is an unregulated sector that has to be attractive to scammers – I suspect a lot of financial shenanigans are going on – one of these days we’ll see one of these resellers suddenly fold up shop and there will be a lot of customers holding the bag.
In general, I echo your sentiments. It’s why I just sold my Phillips gift cards to one of the three site’s I’m a bulk seller with (at a lower rate) than to GCR.
I take pictures of every card, monitor tracking numbers if I it’s fallen out of the anticipated time window and I prefer to associate with larger resellers whenever possible.
At this point it is, in best to worst (of those I associate with), it’s Cardpool, SaveYa, Raise, ABC/CCash. I think having a bulk seller status with them goes a long way towards resolving conflict. This market is ripe with fraud and we’re not the only ones on our toes, so you can’t expect them to be open arms with us at all times. That said, I know there’s a lot of bs that goes on and I won’t defend them because you’re right about a lot of what you said.
It’s also worth mentioning that I’ve purchased what ended up being a lot of bad gift cards from Raise. I suspect they don’t screen these cards. I would expect better from them. While they are issuing me refunds for 6+ cards across three different orders, I will be more careful about my purchases there. This only goes to show that all sites, even the best, have their issues.
Also, I have two direct contacts with ABC/CCash. One is the direct cell number of a bulk rep, the other of their IT/Technical department if I ever run into issues. I sent my bulk rep an email this morning about some technical issues loading gift cards for sale and he literally called me less than 2 minutes later to help. Again, I’m not trying to deny the fact that I’ve seen A LOT of bad things written about them, just giving further data points that actually support your belief that all sites go smoothly until there is that issue.
I just sold to Gift Card Rescue … ill keep you posted.
And still waiting on check from SaveYa over a week at this point.
Monster GC payed out fast and had no problem with them.
Thanks for offering an update on the GCR and Phillips. I’m definitely looking forward to your data point!
Junkcard… so far awesome as soon as they got the GC they sent payment just waiting for it now.
Saveya… takes full 10 business days to get payment… but you do get you payment
Monster GC … AWESOME got payed FAST
GC Rescue …. according to USPS they got it today called them and they said 1-2 business days for processing so still waiting 🙂
ABC GC .. got screwed with a starbucks e-code 🙁 … but the physical card i sent they are sending ACH which was initiated so thats good.
I’m primarily a buyer, so I will speak from that perspective. I first found Giftcardrescue through granny (can only assume they no longer wanted to pay affiliate commissions). They are literally 15 miles from my house, so it seemed safer to deal with them as I got my feet wet.
Had a problem with one card and they refunded me quickly. Had a problem with their charges posting as a cash advance and they refunded fees (they informed me of the issue). They can be slow to ship, have less inventory than others and once cancelled an order without giving any reason. They run good promos and have rewards that can add up. The rewards have worked fine, but the discount promos don’t always work.
I watch their buy rates, but have not used that service yet. Hope this helps some.
Shawn,
You are correct the reason for the discrepancy in price if due to the branding. I contacted Save Ya last week and they told me that they are worried many customers wouldn’t know that a Phillips 66 gc (a much smaller brand) can be used at the other places. That’s why they pay less for it.
Bizarre, I’ve had an absolutely terrible experience with CardCash/ABC as a (non-bulk) seller, but a decent experience (generally fine, bulk seller account exec is bad) with Saveya so I wonder if these ratings tend more to the buy side.