SaveYa is launching a brand new ‘Bulk Seller Preferred Pricing’ program in which bulk sellers can qualify for increased sell rates! This is big news because other gift card exchanges have had increased payouts for their bulk sellers for a while and SaveYa has been simply paying the same to everyone selling gift cards up until this point (to my knowledge at least). The catch is that you need to maintain fairly strict volume requirements each week to qualify for the increased rates, but it seems that there might be some select increased rates regardless of volume as well. They are calling this a ‘Beta Test’ and don’t officially launch the beta program until November 1st, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the rules change in the near future as they test it out. Hopefully they like the way it works and this program ends up being beneficial for everyone involved. I’m optimistic, because SaveYa has come out of the gate strong by increasing a few brands for everyone right away and hopefully the difference in payouts continues to impress!
The Official Information
The email I received advertising the new program contained this information:
Thank you for participating in our NEW Bulk Seller Preferred Pricing Beta Test!
Our Kick off email was sent as a sneak peek and includes some SPECIAL incentives on featured Merchants to REV-UP your sales to SaveYa!
Click here to view this week’s featured merchants.
Beginning November 1st, SaveYa will officially begin rewarding our best Bulk Sellers with preferred payout rates on all of our accepted merchants.
It’s easy to qualify. Here’s how you can earn our best rates:
- Sell us a minimum of just $1250.00 paid out per week OR just 100 gift cards or codes per week
- Keep your fraud rates low
Click for more details
Your preferred payout rates will last the entire week! Watch for your weekly Sunday email with next week’s preferred pricing qualification and featured Merchants.
Start selling cards today!
SaveYa also updated their Support Page with information on the new Preferred Pricing Program, but it’s essentially the same as what was in the email.
My Take On The New Program
First of all, I’m really exciting that they are giving the opportunity to get increased payouts. I’ve used SaveYa for a while because they accept digital codes for most of the brands and it saves me from mailing anything in. They also have competitive rates and even end up top payout % on any site more often than not on the brands I’m selling. For that reason they end up with the majority of my volume anyway, so increasing the payouts even more can only be icing on the cake!
The Volume Requirements for Preferred Pricing
The primary catch is the volume requirements to actually qualify for the Preferred Pricing which currently sits at $1,250 in payouts or 100 cards sold per week. My gift card reselling is purely a side gig that I commit varying amounts of time to each week and the amount I can actually move varies heavily with the deals available. For that reason, I have weeks where I sell $5,000 worth and other weeks where I don’t sell a single card. As my volume is inconsistent and SaveYa seems to be going on a week to week basis, it may prove problematic to me taking advantage of the increased rates on a regular basis.
The $1,250 per week is slightly higher than some of their competitors’ numbers such as GiftCardZen’s recommended $5k/month and Raise’s $2,500/month. SaveYa’s is in fact more strict because unlike GCZ and Raise’s amounts which are looked at to JOIN the bulk seller program, SaveYa seems to be able to instantly and automatically drop you back down to non-preferred pricing on a week to week basis. The others would probably give you a break if you fell short a month or might not care at all once you’ve entered the respective bulk seller programs.
SaveYa has always been one of the quickest exchanges to increase and decrease payouts depending on supply and demand, so I imagine they like only committing on a week to week basis for these preferred pricing brands. Unfortunately for me, that means I have to either maintain a steady flow of cards or simply fall in and out of the preferred pricing on a regular basis. I think I would prefer SaveYa look at an average of the trailing 4-5 weeks instead of just the previous week. This would allow them to still change payouts frequently to adjust for supply and demand, but also accommodate inconsistent (but still bulk) sellers. This is a beta program, so it’s entirely possible they adjust going forward to incentivize the right number of people each week/month to keep selling cards.
A New Bulk Seller Merchant Details Page
One pain point with SaveYa in the past has been a lack of transparency for which cards can be sold digitally versus physically, require a pin or not, and even what the payout was. None of this was easily accessible without selecting a brand, typing in an amount, and sometimes continuing on to the confirm screen to find out! I even made myself a cheatsheet that I shared publicly to help make this information easier to access, but luckily SaveYa has improved the experience as they went and most of this information is somewhat easier to access now.
The launch of the Preferred Pricing Beta also has come along with a brand new “Bulk Seller – Merchant Details” page that is accessible through the “My Account” page once logged in. This page is an amazing addition and blows my little cheatsheet out of the water. Brands, standard payouts, preferred payouts, digital versus physical, and even PIN details are all front and center on an easy to search page (Crtl-F is a savior when checking rates!). Regardless of what comes of the rest of the program, this page is a great addition for bulk sellers to reference.
One thing that jumped out when visiting this new page is a bunch of giant yellow stars and a “Preferred Offer” column:
Some Preferred Pricing Regardless of Volume?
When mousing over the big gold stars on the new Merchant Details page, a text pop-up appears:
“We give the Preferred Offer for starred merchants to all Bulk Sellers!”
What SaveYa appears to be doing (at least for this week) is increase the payout on 9 specific brands for bulk sellers regardless of how much volume you sold in the previous week. Doing a quick check across exchanges via Gift Card Wiki shows that not only does SaveYa have the highest standard payout for most of these brands, but the preferred pricing really sets them out in front! They might just be doing really good payouts initially to get people excited about the new program, but hopefully they continue to offer great payouts going forward.
Overall, I’m Cautiously Optimistic
SaveYa’s new Preferred Pricing program is definitely a positive move for the exchange, but it’s too early to say how beneficial the program will end up being over time. With any “Beta” program typically comes a period of changes both positive and negative for the participants, but hopefully they can find a balance where everybody wins. If you resell gift cards and hadn’t thought about it up until this point because the benefits weren’t amazing, you should definitely consider applying for SaveYa’s bulk program now. Their application page only mentions “Have over $1,000 in gift cards to sell?”, so I don’t know what their current requirements are to join, but it can’t hurt to ask!
I sold over $1,250 today, so I’m excited to see the full list of Preferred Pricing tomorrow (if it’s been implemented already). A few extra % can turn a poor deal into an amazing opportunity!
P.S. If you happen to already be a bulk seller with SaveYa and live anywhere near a Safeway brand store, be sure to check the Just 4 U App! It might just be worth going out of your way to stop by at least once…
I’m going to chime in here on my experience with SaveYa and throw a bit of caution into the mix. I’m a bulk seller with Saveya, Cardpool, CardCash/ABC and also GiftCardMart. Saveya is now in my opinion the worst business to work with and I’m actually avoiding them at all costs at this point.
While I agree with almost every of your posts and believe your content is absolutely top notch material, I have to disagree with you about the highest rates. CardCash in the far majority of instances offers the highest rates AND they accept a wider range of cards. This includes online codes – at the same rates – and doesn’t require you to submit them (you do a split order with physical/online codes). With that said, the customer service of both SaveYa and CardCash is atrocious.
Like you, I do this as side income and a conduit for MS related activities. I’ve evolved to the point where I’m willing to sacrifice profit in order to reduce the PITA (pain in the ass) factor. This is why I’m still testing the waters as I go, because none of the exchanges have particularly done it for me.
CardPool is probably the overall best one thus far, although their rates aren’t usually as competitive and their selection is lacking. I’m currently setting up with GiftCardMart and despite not selling cards yet I feel their service is far superior to the rest. Time will tell of course, but given that I had a 45 minute talk with my manager about some insightful aspects of the exchange industry and that everything he told me was 100% my experiences, I’m definitely going to give them a fair shot. Of the three bulk managers assigned to me, he was leaps and bounds more “in tune” with what’s going on and had a philosophy I completely agreed with.
Also word to the wise, SaveYa has recently been rejecting cards from bulk sellers, taking money from credit cards on file, and NOT even informing the sellers. Tread carefully, because every aspect of SaveYa is “beta test.” They’re constantly shuffling the chairs on the deck and usually don’t have a solid idea for what’s going on, almost like that construction project near you that seems to have taken 3 years to complete yet tells you it’ll be done soon. What you learn is to eventually spend a few extra minutes and avoid that area because it’s not worth the hassle despite it being a seemingly better route. That’s essentially what I’m recommending with SaveYa.
Wow, you have definitely had a different experience than me, but thanks for providing a view from the other side. I’ve had a few cards rejected by SaveYa for legitimate reasons, but my bulk sales rep has always informed me right away with all the details.
Please let me know how GiftCardMart bulk sales go for you, I don’t know anyone who has used them yet.
Yeah, I’ve had my share of issues personally with SaveYa so it’s not just what I’ve heard through the grapevine. My biggest gripe with them is zero accountability and black holes re: customer service.
As far a GCM is concerned, I really like the fact they only work with bulk sellers. You’re a really smart guy and I don’t need to get into the details as to why it’s huge, but the bottom line is it results in better margins passed on to both buyers and sellers at GCM. Yes, they seem to have their own little quirks (all sites do) such as payout option being once a week or not as huge of a buy/sell list for gift cards. My account manager fwiw actually does what we do as well, so as he said they’re “plugged into” the market better than some of the larger companies. As you know, small businesses can move and adjust much quicker and in this sense GCM has an edge.
My biggest concern at this point in how gift cards work in my MS arsenal is the time suck and I’ll absolutely take less money if it means less hassle and getting where I have to get quicker. My time is better spent playing with my 1 year old, not having email conversations back and forth over a few Sephora gift cards that SaveYa botched in their system.
I’ve been bulk with Gcm since May and agree they have the best experience by far, and the guys there are all MSers themselves. The only downside is that they don’t accept a huge variety of cards, but between Raise and GCM I’ve been doing pretty well. I have had a really bad experience with bulk account manager unresponsiveNess and a chargeback from saveya, where I am also bulk, and although this preferred pricing (I had a different interpretation than you – I think the stars are the preferred pricing for those who met the requirements the previous week) has me coming back just for that Safeway deal. I just hope they don’t reject my cards because they get flooded by them. 🙁
I definitely didn’t qualify for the overall Preferred Pricing this week, but still have access to the yellow star brands for preferred pricing. The language “…all bulk sellers.” definitely makes me think it’s separate from the Preferred Pricing that requires the volume limits. My best guess is that almost ALL brands will have Preferred Pricing if you meet the limits, but I guess we will have to wait and see.
My best guess for what they are using the “yellow starred” brands for is getting a lot of volume for specific brands when they identify opportunities to sell a lot quickly themselves (during sales and such). We should know more over the next couple weeks.
I sold over $1250 in settlements in this week, but I did not qualify citing- “Too high fraud rate”. Now I sold 331 cards to saveya so far only 3 cards turned out to be bad. Those were Macy’s Cards I had purchased from Raise and sold to Saveya. Now I know its a bad move, but I did that way back in April-May when I started into Giftcard resell and I was learning. I read posts on Gift card arbitrage and post outlined cards can be sold to Saveya at such and such percentage with arbitrage, So I instantly jumped on it and did it. After reading yours and Chasing the points’s posts I learnt little more into this and stopped doing Arbitrage from one to other exchange.
But I though 3 out 331 should have been low. Apparently, according to Saveya its too high. So I could not verify if almost ALL brands will have Preferred Pricing if you meet the limits.
If any one else finds out please post here. I have asked Saveya to find out what is the cut off for low fraud rate, so I can find out how much more volume will I need to remove those 3 black dots from my history.
Let me know what you find out about the fraud rate, I “qualified” for the Preferred Pricing this week, but it’s exactly the same as last week when I wasn’t qualified. I think this might just be because they launched it last week and said in the email it would start Nov. 1st, so I’m still hopeful the rates get better across the board.
Less than a 1% fraud rate doesn’t seem that bad, so I’m curious to hear if they tell the official cutoff or not. I don’t have my numbers in front of me but I’ve had higher volume than you with about the same fraud rate (2-4 cards) and currently show up as qualified on the website.
Noah, you will get to see Preferred pricing after 11/01/15 I believe. I spoke to Account Manager but she did not divulge any information about how much is “high” fraud rate. As per her though, the fraud rate does not count from the life of bulk seller account. It counts in last 30 days. The problem is all my 3 bad cards even though were sold in May, turned out to be deactivated only in October. So they see at as I have 3 bad cards in this month versus 31 cards I sold to qualify for $1250. Which sure looks high if we put that way.
Good luck to you with next week’s sells. Please keep us posted how all rates go high.
Are you also a bulk seller on Raise then? How would you compare the two? I am currently on their Bronze program and not familiar with GCM’s program, although after reading this I just sent in a request. But how would you compare the two from rates to payments to overall experience?
Thanks
Mike
Hi Noan, I sold over $1250 in settlement again this week with Saveya and still “high Fraud Rate” did not go away. I am still not qualified for preferred pricing. Can you tell us how all the rates are changing? I am interested in knowing if all of them get little higher rates of not.
I wish I could provide more information, but I haven’t qualified myself the past two weeks.
I am new to this site, but loved this article as I started my business a few weeks ago and was wondering about bulk rates. I was fortunate to get bulk rates from Raise, right out of the gate and they assigned me two reps who have been fantastic. But with that said, I am always interested in what else is out there.
Since I am new what does “MS”….. stand for… I do not understand the reference.
Thanks
MS stands for Manufactured Spend which relates to generating credit card “spend” in which you don’t actually lose money in order to generate various credit card rewards. Traditionally this involves cash equivalents such as Visa gift cards and prepaid accounts, but some people use gift card arbitrage as a form of it. In general, it’s probably best to resell gift cards (and/or merchandise) with the goal of making a profit and treating the credit card rewards as a bonus. Assigning any value to the points makes the margins razor-thin and leaves you fairly vulnerable to losing money over time.
Good luck with Raise! I sell most of my cards through them as the rates typically win out for popular cards, but SaveYa is usually better when a physical card is required (gas and restaurants mostly).