DeltaPoints describes how he used the last Skymall offer of 25,000 Delta miles for a purchase of $500 or more in order to generate 250,000 miles for a net cost of $700 by buying items and then reselling them on eBay.
I found that they sold SAMSUNG GALAXY TAB 10.1′s for $499.99. I also got a 9v battery for 99 cents. I then resold all 10 of the TAB’s on eBay in one day. My cost to sell them including my eBay, Paypal and s&h fee’s to get them out the door was a loss of $70 per order. Thus, for $700 I earned 250,000 skymiles plus 10,000 Capital One points for the $5000 purchase cost (10×500).
Now, the price of tablets is coming down and I don’t see recapturing $430+shipping per Samsung tablet in the future.
But it’s worth coming up with the most re-sellable items on Skymall, because it’s expected that the offer will return during the first week of December.
Skymall even has support set up for it, they’ll accept email questions at miles -at- skymall.com. They’ve suggested that coupon codes will invalidate the offer, but that they will accept price matches from major retailers so while many of their prices are often above-market those prices can be brought down with a little bit of effort.
Ready… Set… Wait a few days for the offer to come out.
You got me. I was ready to pull the trigger.
When does the offer come out?
Another clever strategy to accumulate FF points.
All well and good until some buyer(s) notify ebay/paypal that they didn’t receive the goods. Then paypal will notify you that they are going to attach the money from your bank account.
Try googling “paypal is the devil” and enjoy a big cup of coffee while reading the horrors of paypal.
If you can find Arbitrage in SkyMall Pricing you deserve all the miles you can get.
We need a crack team of analysts on this immediately. Who’s willing to volunteer?
A pricematch to amazon for the galaxy tab for $449 plus some fillers to get to $500 could be sold on craigslist or ebay for a minimal loss, I think
@ ACE – all you have to do is have is signature required with tracking number and make the USPS shipping label from the PAYPAL site and you are 100% covered. I don’t love PAYPAL but if you play the game the way they want you are safe I have found.
I just got word it will be LIVE tomorrow but limited to the 1st 1000 orders for the 25k! – Rene
@Trev: SkyMall will not pricematch to Amazon because they have 3rd party sellers listed and Skymall considers tha akin to Ebay.
@ Mordy @ Trev – wrong. Last time they DID match Amazon as long as it was not an individual seller! I would think this time as well. You can always send in more than one and ask them to please take the best one under the terms. These folks are TOPS!
How do you get the price match? Can you order online and pay the SkyMall price (to make sure you are one of the first 1000) and then call/send the price match? I’ve never price-matched anything in my life, but there is first time for everything 🙂
@ Alex – you got it. Read more here:
http://www.skymall.com/shopping/pricepolicy.htm
Probably a stupid question, but I assume these points don’t count as MQM?
If I do price match, should the reduced price before tax/shipping be over 500? or only the original needs to be?
@DeltaGoldFlyer That may be true anecdotaly, but the policy of Skymall as told to me by reps over the phone and an email rejecting my pricematch request said that ebay and amazon are not valid sources for a pricematch.Here’s the email i got:
Subject: Re: price match order # 14574079 [InteractionID: 24a9d530-bdf0-491b-9bef-3a68f74482f7]
Dear xxxxxxx,
SkyMall does not price match with auction website’ s such as, e-bay and amazon. The product you are looking to price match is through the amazon site, it won’t be eligible for a price match I do apologize for the inconvenience.
If you need further assistance, please contact us 1-800-759-6255.
Thank you,
[SkyMall]
@Daniel sadly no but my post this morning on getting qualifying miles through things other than flying may be instructive.
Most good values will probably not qualify for the promotion:
I think some people are forgettting or were never aware that to qualify for the last promotion you had to go through a special link (I think skymall.com/25000) when purchasing and only a fraction of the products Skymall offers was available for purchase via that link (with most of the decent values absent).
So chances are if you find a good value on Skymall.com ntoday I suspect it not be available via the link we’ll have to use tomorrow and will not qualify for the promotion.
This is how almost everyone last time around looking for a item that was at a fair price either bought a Galaxy tab or an EOS Rebel camera.