I got into the gift card reselling game a few months ago and under the sage advice of Chasing the Points, I decided to try becoming a bulk seller. Glancing through the gift cards I had at the time and Gift Card Granny’s sell page, it looked like either Giftcards.com or SaveYa would be the best options considering they had the highest public rates for the cards I was looking to sell. I knew the two companies were associated with each other, but I didn’t realize at the time that SaveYa was just getting started. Well, as others have suspected, it looks like SaveYa is going to take over the discount gift card business (at least the buying part) from Giftcards.com. I’ll explain what this means for you and why this might be good news for those of us reselling gift cards.
My Story with Giftcards.com and SaveYa
As I mentioned above, the first company I tried to become a bulk seller with was SaveYa. When I was just starting, I had no idea how much volume I would be able to move per month. Their bulk seller intro page mentioned $500/month as a starting point which seemed pretty reasonable, plus the bullet point “No monthly minimum to maintain Bulk Seller benefits.” made me feel much more comfortable. In a situation where a minimum was required, I worried that I might be tempted to sell unprofitable cards just to maintain status which sounds extremely stressful. Everything sounded good, so I contacted their bulk seller email address and started the process to become a bulk seller.
At this point (late February), SaveYa was just getting started, so they didn’t have the infrastructure set up to take on new bulk sellers. I was told to fill out an application on Giftcards.com which would then apply to both companies if I was accepted. Great news for me, 2 bulk seller accounts for the effort of one! While Giftcards.com and SaveYa often have the same rate, for whatever reason, each has specific retailers for which they had a higher rate. After the fairly painless process of being approved for bulk sales, I started selling on both Giftcards.com and SaveYa. The one with the higher rate got my business, but if they were equal, I would choose SaveYa because I preferred being paid by ACH which Giftcards.com didn’t support. Overall, my experience selling with both companies was good and I only ran into a few small hiccups during the process.
SaveYa Is Ready For The Big Time…
SaveYa as a website and company is still very new even though they have the backing of Giftcards.com. Up until this point, I would say SaveYa was in a beta stage while they got everything up and running smoothly. It looks like they are finally comfortable with the state of the system though, as Giftcards.com appears to have shut off bulk sales on their website. The normal “Bulk Seller” button on the sale page now links directly to SaveYa’s bulk page instead of taking you to the bulk seller part of Giftcards.com. I confirmed with my bulk sales rep (same for both companies) that this was intentional and was also informed that they are moving everyone over to SaveYa at this point in time.
My main complaint is that no information about this was sent out to myself or any other bulk seller to my knowledge. Apparently they just expected me to notice the next time I went to sell on Giftcards.com which is a pretty bad customer experience for their bulk sellers. In addition to the abrupt end to bulk sales on Giftcards.com, there’s still several minor issues that I think SaveYa should have worked out before taking over.
…But There’s Still Some Issues to Work Out
Overall, my experience with selling on SaveYa has been a positive one, but I can still feel the “beta”-ness of the whole process. Firstly, while my bulk sales rep has acknowledged that I am set up as a bulk seller, the website doesn’t seem to recognize this fact. When I first started, the sale limit wasn’t increased to the correct amount (but it wasn’t being enforced, so I wasn’t blocked from selling). They later fixed the sale limit part, but every time I sell a card, the sale page still encourages me to “Become a Bulk Seller on SaveYa”.
Another small complaint is the volatility of the rates they buy gift cards at. The bulk sales rate is the same as the public rate published to Gift Card Granny, but changes on a fairly regular basis. These changes are not communicated out to the bulk sellers which adds risk to every gift card I buy expecting to sell to either Giftcards.com or SaveYa. If I buy a card at 80% expecting to sell it for 83%, but by the time the card arrives, I can only sell it for 79%, that’s a pretty big problem. This seems to be their business model though, so I don’t expect this to get better going forward.
The problem I have more of an issue with is all the false advertising on their bulk seller page. By my count, only about half of the items have actually been implemented. This would be fine if they were still in the beta stage, but as soon as they move everyone over, I would expect them to either implement them or update the page to reflect that they are “Coming Soon”. I’ll give you my thoughts on each item below:
- Increased payout percentages when certain thresholds are reached.
- False, this item is completely false at the moment, and after I inquired about it with my sales rep, I was informed that the published rate is the only rate they buy at. My rep did mention this should be coming in the future, so I’m optimistic, but it’s still false advertising in my book.
- No monthly minimum to maintain Bulk Seller benefits.
- True, and a very good selling point for those who can’t commit to consistent month to month volume.
- Dedicated Account Manager
- True, my sales rep has been fairly responsive even though I’m currently waiting to hear back about some cards I mailed in that have been in the “Processing” state for a few days now.
- Reporting dashboard
- While SaveYa does have sales history, it doesn’t come close to the sales dashboard that Giftcards.com has. Hopefully they are able to port some of the graphs and options from Giftcards.com to SaveYa because I like chopping up data and SaveYa’s sales page doesn’t work well for doing it.
- Fast payout using ACH or Paypal
- True, the turnaround is very quick when selling digital cards and I typically receive an ACH deposit within a day or two.
- Check gift card balances
- False, it is not currently possible to use SaveYa to look up balances for you. (Please correct me if there’s a place to do this I’m unaware of)
- Multiple Options for Uploading Gift Cards
- In store / cashier system
- False to my knowledge.
- Bulk uploading tools (CSV template or cut and paste)
- True, it’s a direct port from Giftcards.com, but that’s a good thing. No need to fix what isn’t broken.
- Scan with our Mobile App
- False, the Mobile App is very bare bones right now. It’s not even possible to view sales history at this point in time.
- In store / cashier system
- On Demand printing center so no need to send cards to us (coming soon).
- True, but only because they put “coming soon”. I’m not sure exactly what they mean by this, but in the best case, I wouldn’t have to mail in ANY cards as they could just take the info and print their own in cases where a physical card is required (gas and restaurants mostly). This would be exciting if implemented.
Like I said, about 50/50 accuracy on SaveYa’s bulk page, but maybe they have some exciting announcements lined up for the public notice that SaveYa is taking over Giftcards.com’s card buying space (if they announce it at all). Increased payout percentages and the “On Demand printing center” make the future of SaveYa look pretty good, but they still have some work to do. For now, my main annoyance is that I can’t sell cards to Giftcards.com despite them still having rates published to Gift Card Granny. I even tried selling a card as a non-bulk seller but got an error and didn’t try any further to push it through (Is anyone else able to sell to them right now?). All in all, I feel like I should give them the benefit of the doubt as they transition and I’m still optimistic about our continued business relationship. At least as long as they can compete with the bulk rates I’m getting on Raise.com that is. 🙂
Hat tip to Phoebe who first brought the Giftcards.com bulk button change to my attention via email.
Hey Noah,
I became a bulk seller on Saveya as well. I agree with your assertions about some of their false claims. On another note, I contacted my representative about getting an increase in payout because other portals were paying 2-3% more than they did. So they bumped it up, but I forgot to send the codes to them and did not enter it in their system. The following week it got reset to the previous amount. My rep said they update prices on Tuesday.
Thanks for the good info, I’ll keep that in mind if SaveYa is behind the competitors and I’m selling a decent amount. I know they update rates more often than Tuesday from personal experience, but maybe that’s only in special circumstances where they start getting overwhelmed with cards (Gap Kids for example).
I’m really hoping the increased payouts at certain thresholds gets implemented soon, maybe once this transition is over. Either way, I’m optimistic about the future of SaveYa
You would think they would offer rates for bulk sellers that are slightly a bit higher. Going through the application process was tedious plus they asked for your ssn, which felt very odd.
How long did it take to get approved for bulk seller status with SaveYa? I applied last week and haven’t heard back and am currently sitting on a bunch of Gap GCs that I would like to unload soon…
It took a couple weeks going back and forth with my assigned bulk seller rep to become an approved bulk seller with SaveYa. The only work on my part was filling out the application and answering a few of their questions, but it still took a week or two before I was up an running on SaveYa.
As I mentioned in the article, I applied through Giftcards.com and that status was transferred to SaveYa (sort of), so it is entirely possible the process has changed since I went through it.
While I’m not a bulk seller, I do have a complaint about SaveYa that readers may want to read. I sold with them yesterday morning. I got the invoice I was to mail with my cards and the address they were to go to. I printed it out and mailed them. TEN hours later I got an email stating my order was denied with no explanation. I now have gift cards en route to them that they apparently won’t accept. I’m waiting on a response as to what happens next. I’m pretty sure I won’t be using them again though, even if it’s 1% better.
That sounds like an awful experience. Hopefully they make it right with you, probably by simply mailing back the cards, but I’d be curious to hear why they denied your sale at all. Please update with what comes of the situation.
Do you know how to speak to a rep there that can actually help? Anytime I call I get somebody in India, who tries to be helpful, but you can tell they have NO IDEA what they are talking about…and basically they just fill out a customer service form for me (so why bother) I am thinking about calling to be a bulk seller