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People who eBay their Hot Deals

K

Kango

Member
I personally don't think it's unethical to take part in a hot deal and then eBay the product for a little bit of profit, as long as it's on a small scale (i.e. 1-2, don't buy 10 of the product and sell 'em all). If you think it's wrong, please keep your flames out.

I was just wondering how much money there is to be made by keeping track of the Hot Deals forum and reselling things occasionally. Does anybody here do this? Are there any categories of products that generate the most profit? I'm a poor college kid and making extra bucks LEGALLY (unlike my ex-roommate the drug dealer) would be pretty sweet.
 
Nothing wrong with selling hot deals items. I hate buying them when I know the person paid much less, but hey, I'm getting a good deal. And I don't have to go through all that pricematching and rebate processing.

I'm sure some of the hot deals people are making quite a lot. There was someone on FW that bought $10,000 from Dell when they had the 31% off mistake. 😕
 
I don't see anything wrong with it. The problem is there are so many people right now doing that the profits are very, very slim. Plus you'll have to wait on all the rebates and such.
 
i dont do it, but dont think its unethical at any scale...unless u somehow cheat the company on rebates

but you are buying at the price offered and selling it at your own...do you think companies buy it for the price they offer? no, they buy it cheaper...

its perfectly ok to buy it cheap and sell it expensive as long as people are willing to pay
 
nothings wrong with it. not only you make a profit, you save other people money by passing on the savings in a lowered price auction.
 
There's nothing wrong with it but as a college student you probably don't have the money to keep a stock of these products and it would probably not be too good to say use a credit card to buy stuff. Start small and see how it goes....
 
I eBay 95% of my Hot Deals on eBay. I make a killing doing so.

You just have to know which items are "hot" and which items are already flooded on the eBay market. If I see an item that I think is a Hot Deal, I go to eBay first to see what it's selling for. If I'm not going to make more than $10-15, I don't bother. I normally go for $25-40 profit ranges.

Sometimes, even higher. Couple months back, Office Depot had a Toshiba e335 PocketPC for $280 after coupon minus $100 OfficeDepot rebate. Toshiba also had a rebate for $100. I sold it for $220 on eBay. Got one $100 rebate check back today and the other will be here tomorrow. So I pocketed $140.

I recently sold 10 Iomega Zip 750 USB drives for around $107 a pop. Each came with a $50 rebate (limit 10 rebates per address). I paid $117 each for them shipped. There's a nice profit for me. And Iomega rebates come back FAST.

And I time most of my auctions to conicide with OfficeMax's free (or 50% off) Airborne shipping. More $$$$ to be made on shipping costs for me.

As for rebates, I scan in copies of all recipts, UPCs and rebate forms so NOBODY screws with me. All rebates that can be tracked online, I track (Wheresmyrebate, Rebatestatus, ExpressGroup, RebatesHQ, etc.).

There's plenty of money to be made if you do research and keep good records.
 
Some people do this for a living.

It's not uncommon for FW'ers Dell orders to be $10,000 or more. Yes that's 10 thousand dollars+
 
i made a ton of cash off hot deals,
couple of examples:
5 SGi 1600sw LCD ... got for 550 sold for ~1100
5 Gallant web server things on closeoutpaid 99 sold for 150+
50-ish 5 dollar cell phones from circuit city (me +3 my friend drove all over detroit metro area)...paid 5 bucks sold for 35 a piece
 
Nothing wrong with it, I go around estate sales and such but hot deals are so much less work🙂

Though nowadays I use it as a cheap way to upgrade.

Buy a couple of 120GB Maxtors for cheap, sell off my set of IBM 80GB for more than the Maxtors.

Buy a couple of external cdrws, sell off the drives and keep the enclosures.
 
I ebay things sometimes. It was the best job as an undergraduate student. Work at most 1 hour a day and earn thousands of dollars a month. But I usually don't do deals from the Hot Deals forum because they're usually really saturated. Nowadays it's better for me to find my own deals or more obscure ones 🙂

When eToys was going out of business 2-3 years ago, I made over $4000 in that month. That's some decent money for a student still in college 🙂
 
Like NFS4 said, going for the deals with the good rebates are really where you can come out smelling like a rose. You just have to be really dilligent about the rebates.
 
What's the general practice with items that require the UPC to be sent in for the rebate? Do you include in your auction "This is the original product, unused, in the original packaging... except with the UPC missing" ? What's a classy way of stating that fact? Seems odd.
 
Originally posted by: Kango
What's the general practice with items that require the UPC to be sent in for the rebate? Do you include in your auction "This is the original product, unused, in the original packaging... except with the UPC missing" ? What's a classy way of stating that fact? Seems odd.
Click to expand...

Here is the disclaimer I use when selling something that has the UPC missing b/c I sent it off for a rebate:

"UPC HAS BEEN CAREFULLY REMOVED FOR PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES"
 
To make it profitable you need to have a lot of money to start with since A LOT of money is tied up in rebates.

I have about $1500 in rebates right now but thats a drop in the bucket for many people. I don't feel sorry for people who LOSE money on ebay by mistakenly overlooking market conditions. I've stopped ebaying for a month or so until I've paid all my summer school dues and have a few rebates come back to me.

-psianime
 
Originally posted by: psianime
To make it profitable you need to have a lot of money to start with since A LOT of money is tied up in rebates.

I have about $1500 in rebates right now but thats a drop in the bucket for many people. I don't feel sorry for people who LOSE money on ebay by mistakenly overlooking market conditions. I've stopped ebaying for a month or so until I've paid all my summer school dues and have a few rebates come back to me.

-psianime
Click to expand...

You can still do it. I never deal with rebates (even though it does look profitable). I buy stuff and resell them before the credit card bill comes 🙂 Even then, I do keep a little cushion/buffer just in case.
 
I sold things on eBay as an undergraduate, too. It was nice to earn in one month what other people (students working student jobs part time) made an entire semester 🙂
 
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