Last week I wrote about an awesome Amex Offer where you if you make a $200 purchase at Neiman Marcus, you’ll receive a $50 statement credit. The best part about this offer it that gift card purchases made online DO COUNT. And even better, you can sell the gift cards for a slight profit. I personally was about to make $153 for less than an hours worth of my time… assuming all went smoothly!
Purchasing the gift card was easy on Neiman Marcus. Within minutes of making the purchase, the Amex Offer email letting me know I saved money appeared in my inbox. While the gift cards took about 36 hours to process and to be sent to me, Cardpool was still buying Neiman Marcus gift cards at a profit. Things were looking promising!
And then yesterday morning I received a bunch of order cancellation emails from Neiman Marcus. My $200 gift cards were being refunded. I absolutely did NOT request a refund! I called Neiman Marcus and was read the notes verbatim on my order – “Unauthorized by American Express – declined.” I called American Express and as expected they have no records of declining the order – my order was approved by them immediately. My purchase of $200 has even posted to my account, it is not in pending status. The team that deals with this is not back in the office till Monday so I’ll have to call back then to get this figured out.
Unfortunately, it seems like this has happened with many folks (although not all). So, if you are looking to take advantage of the Neiman Marcus Amex Offer by purchasing gift cards, you might run into similar issues. Hopefully though this will get resolved! It looks like my hour of making $153 (and possibly even more) will take a lot longer!
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Wow.
Who in the world could have ever seen this one coming?
Might want to change your old blog post to “I almost made a quick and easy $153 but since myself and 6000 other bloggers posted about it, well you know what happened next!”
Bloggers didn’t kill this! All you people that read our blogs did! It’s your fault!
@lopere – I might have to. But, I have a feeling this will all be resolved.
I had one go through within 24 hrs then 3 more that have been pending for 3 days. At this point, having it cancelled would be preferable than getting stuck with 3 NM cards
Ordered 2 $100 gift cards when you made your post (Thursday). Received them within an hour of ordering and posted immediately on Cardpool. On Friday, ordered 2 $200 gift cards during the Alaskaair 15x points and never received my e giftcards.
Wondering if the $ amount has anything to do with it as well. Any other data points of people ordering on Friday with smaller amounts than $200 that they received? However, most likely has to do with the influx of orders.
I never received a cancelation notice.
@mike – I placed a few $200 and $50 ordered. The amount purchased didn’t seem to matter. All were returned.
ha ha bound to happen when everyone in the world writing about it
I’m on day 3 of waiting for my second round of orders. The first came through pretty quickly. What’s odd is that the charge is no longer showing as pending or posted, it’s just disappeared. But, I haven’t gotten an email saying it’s been cancelled either.
Just did the Neiman Marcus live chat and they say my second round of gift card orders should go through tomorrow, Day 4. Just slower than the first round. We’ll see…
Mark – that is odd
In the post Mike world, Bloggers can’t expect publicity not to kill these deals anymore. Let people find them on their own or in small groups in a staged rollout.
What lopere said.
I’m a little confused, are they zeroing out gift cards you’ve already received or not letting you place new orders?
@Jamie – They zeroed out my gift cards and refunded the amount paid.
My story is slightly different. I got the gift cards/pins within hours. Sold them to Cardpool – so after the trial was so successful – I repeated. Seventeen times. Smooth as buttah.
Then Cardpool hits me with this: Dear ______________,
We recently received your gift card code transaction but our processing center encountered an issue while processing your cards.
Our risk assessment team has determined that we aren’t able to accept the transaction at this time. We have cancelled the transaction and are returning ownership of the gift cards to you. Unfortunately, we’re not able to disclose any further specifics regarding this process.
We apologize for any inconvenience to you.
Best regards,
Customer Support
Cardpool.com
I’m hoping to rectify this. If not – Does anyone need $3600 in Nieman Marcus?
I got the same email on one of my orders. The other one went through smoothly and they sent me a check. The one i received this email on was for an order of 4 gift cards sold to Cardpool. How many cards were on your order?
Well actually there were around ten orders. Most of them were for four cards $50 each.
Two orders went through fine. They said I could resubmit – but the same thing happened on my re-submission of four different orders. Sigh.
My story is slightly different. I got the gift cards/pins within hours. Sold them to Cardpool – so after the trial was so successful – I repeated. Seventeen times. Smooth as buttah.
Then Cardpool hits me with this: Dear ______________,
We recently received your gift card code transaction but our processing center encountered an issue while processing your cards.
Our risk assessment team has determined that we aren’t able to accept the transaction at this time. We have cancelled the transaction and are returning ownership of the gift cards to you. Unfortunately, we’re not able to disclose any further specifics regarding this process.
We apologize for any inconvenience to you.
Best regards,
Customer Support
Cardpool.com
I’m hoping to rectify this. If not – Does anyone need $3600 in Nieman Marcus?
Or the refund – I’d take a NM refund in a heartbeat!!!!
@Randy – Interesting. I’m sorry about that. Have you tried selling with a different site. Or are you able to try again in a few weeks with Cardpool?
I haven’t tried reselling. I’ve written to Cardpool in hopes we can convince them I’m not a thief. I’ll keep you posted.
You were too greedy. I did $800; everything went smoothly.
After listing my $800 of e-gift cards with CardPool, they are requesting that I send the physical cards. I have emailed a couple times noting that these are e-cards, with no response to my emails. Any thoughts on how to proceed? Is there a better way to communicate with CardPool?
Same here. I also sent an email. I tried to call but they only had an answering machine.
I am in the same boat with Cardpook asking for physical cards now after I submitting the virtual codes. I don’t know if I can sell elsewhere until I get a reply that they cancel my request….
My NM orders seem to have gone through but they seem to be stuck in the “ordered” status on Cardpool for 3 days now. Accordino to the website checks are shipped to sellers within one business day… Another strange note is that there are no $200 NM GC’s for sale on Cardpool. Go figure!!
I am in the same boat with Cardpool asking for physical cards now after I submitting the virtual codes. I don’t know if I can sell elsewhere until I get a reply that they cancel my request….
Cardpool invited me to resubmit. I’ve done that for $400 in cards and they were once again accepted. We’ll see if the check comes.
Love all the rooks freaking out
I received an email today from Cardpool cancelling their purchase of my $800 in e-gift cards. Now to find another place to sell. Any suggestions?
Mine were canceled too but I have submitted them to gift card zen and it looks like it went though. They are buying them for $166 and it takes 10 days to get the payment but thats better than getting stuff with the NM gift cards.
I cashed my $600 worth of NM gift cards on Cardpool for Amazon gift cards and then just applied the $177.02 to my Amazon account. I’ll eventually use the Amazon credit since they sell just about everything there. Worked smoothly and I just checked and I got the $50 credit from American Express.
$177.02 per gift card. So $27.02 profit per $200 NM gift card after the $50 rebate from American Express.
I sold 7 $200 cards to Cardpool… they accepted 3 but rejected 4 (an email with no specifics just said they were returning ownership of the cards to me)… anyone else have had this happen?
Sure Bill – see all my comments above. I resubmitted MANY – and 8 $50 cards were accepted the second time. Just that creepy little note that says “we can’t tell you why.” Maybe you’ll feel better to know that you’re not stuck with nearly as many as I am.
Do resubmit though.
How can you tell which ones sold and which ones didn’t? I am in that predicament now.
When (if) I figure it out – I’ll let you know Maury.
Cardpool shows I have 14x$100 “pending payout”. Waiting to see when.
Hey I got my order cancelled from neiman Marcus too… I was wondering if anyone could send me the cancellation email they received so I could see if there is any difference in the reason.
Email: chicpupper@gmail.com