In the miles and points world, there aren’t 2 better places to shop at than Sears and Kohls. Why? Because they usually offer 10 miles per dollar spent and in the case of Sears, will give you portal points for buying gift cards too, or what is known as the “double-dip.” That means let’s say you wanted to buy a $100 item from Sears.com. If you shop through a portal and buy the item outright, you would earn 1,000 miles. Easy enough. However, if you shop through the portal first and buy a $100 Sears gift card instead, you’ll earn 1,000 miles and now have a $100 Sears gift card. Now go through the portal a 2nd time and buy the item and pay with that gift card you just bought. You would earn another 1,000 miles for a total of 2,000 miles for the same $100 spend. I once earned over 500,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points 2 years ago when Sears was offering 10X miles through the Chase UR. I was buying Google Nexus 7 tablets that had just come out. I was buying them for $250 and selling them for $280 on Ebay. I also bought Logitech remotes that were $99 and resold for $130. I sold so much that I got Sears Platinum VIP status, and they eventually stopped me from earning any more “Shop Your Way” points. How did I know what to buy? Because I spent nearly 2 hours looking up every electronic item on Sears.com and cross referencing it to Ebay to see what would sell. I didn’t even bother looking at clothes to resell (higher fees, higher rate of return due to ‘didn’t fit.) Coincidentally, after those 2 months, Sears stopped paying out for gift cards. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one that was doing that volume, but I’m sure I played a part in that decision.
Once that gravy train ended, I moved on to Kohl’s who was also offering 10X miles through the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal. Kohl’s is usually overpriced, and that’s why they run so many promos. The key in getting extreme savings with Kohl’s is that you HAVE to get their store credit card. By having the card, you can get 30% off instead of 20% off for the general public. Don’t worry though, you won’t need to charge anything on the card per se. Kohl’s will still give you the 30% off if you use gift cards to pay for the merchandise, but you have to be a card member for this to work. And Kohl’s had let you double dip as well, so I was getting 20X on purchases. Not only that, Kohl’s also gives out $10 of Kohl’s Cash for every $50 you spent, and they just introduced Kohl’s Rewards as well. I somehow got $100 in Kohl’s Rewards last month for all of my purchases. In checking over my Ebay records, I must have sold over 120 Nutribullet 600 and 900 variants over these years. All at a profit, not including the bonus Chase points. Eventually Kohl’s put a limit to 5 Nutribullets per household, and earlier this year, excluded Nutribullets from shopping portals and eventually excluded gift cards from shopping portals. This is why you have to stay head of the game. How did I know to buy the Nutribullets? Once again, hours of research.
Where we are at today – Sears eventually saw sales had dropped and started to allow gift card purchases to count through portals, and so you can now double-dip again at Sears. Kohl’s no longer lets you double-dip, but I seem to be able to find more items to resell at a profit from Kohl’s than Sears. These days, when there is a sale on a Kohl’s gift card, I’ll buy them and wait for the next 30% off and Kohl’s Cash and portal bonus.
How do I calculate if something is going to be a profitable item to resell? I have a Google Docs sheet that has formulas already in it. I just fill in the cells in red (price on Kohl’s.com, Ebay price, and my guess of shipping cost). If the margin is around 15%, I buy the item. Notice how I don’t even factor in portal points. That’s just the cherry on top. Most people will sell things at a loss just to build miles. I don’t like to do that.
| Item | Price | 30% off | after tax | KC | Net | Ebay price | Fees | Shipping | Net | Profit | Margin |
| Aviator | 125 | 87.5 | 95.8125 | 17.5 | 78.3125 | 140 | 16.8 | 35 | 88.2 | $9.89 | 7.06% |