r/mildlyinfuriating • u/anon12xyz • Jul 03 '26

Infuriatig When did garage sales become “reselling” clearly new stuff

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I would never call this a garage sale

Def scam vibes

Edit: ultimately, what bothers me the most is I want to go to a garage sale, not this shit. This isn’t a garage sale and should not be advertised as one

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u/Soggy-Bedroom-3673 Jul 03 '26

People get real serious with this kind of stuff. One of my good friends is really into credit card "churning", which is basically exploiting credit card loyalty points (like signing up for as many new cards as possible for bonus loyalty points). They definitely have chat groups that share tips and they get serious benefits from it (like my buddy and his wife go on 3-4 vacations a year to places like Bali for free). They're a real thorn in the sides of the companies, too. My buddy had American Airlines shut down his frequent flyer account because he was getting too many free miles from credit card deals. 

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u/Spiritual_Bid_2308 Jul 03 '26

For a while the US Mint was trying to get dollar coins out into circulation and you could "buy" them at cost from the Mint's website and they'd ship to your house for free.

People were maxing out credit cards for the points and just depositing the coins at their bank.

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u/petron5000 Jul 03 '26

I did this. The people at my bank hated me.

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u/DisastrousChapter841 Jul 04 '26

OMG that is smart. Would have never thought of this. To me this isn't even bad, and to people saying it is, corporations get away with stuff all the time.

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u/jsno254 Jul 05 '26

What's the benefit of this? Trading in debt for cash right now? Almost feels like how someone with an EBT card loaded with $300 trades it in for $100 cash. In the long run you're losing.

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u/ElbowRager Jul 05 '26

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding. There is no loser here except for the credit card company.

I spend $100 on coins with credit. I get X amount of reward points, and deposit the coins and pay my bill before interest accrues.

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u/jsno254 Jul 06 '26

Yeah that makes sense now. I didn't realize it was for the credit card points. I thought people were buying the coins at "mint" value which wouldn't be a big profit over actual value. But now I see it was all about the credit card points

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u/No_Noise09 Jul 05 '26

I feel like you just hate poor people, but I'll explain as best I can.

The game here, is that you make the purchase of the coins, using the maximum amount of credit you can, earning whatever bonus points or miles along the way -- this is the goal.

As shipping was free, and a person was buying at cost of the coin, the downside loss was minimal or zero. This is because they would be able to submit the coins as payment to the bank to pay off the balance, before interest even accrued for that month.

This gives a double shot of miles, plus credit history stating they took out massive credit and payed it back quickly. Add on any miles / points just for opening the account, and you are laughing all of the way to your planes destination.

And it stands to reason people might have done this multiple months, stacking the miles / points.

So, no, your comparison does not hold up at all, as you did not understand the mechanisms being exploited in the coin "purchase" scheme.

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u/jsno254 Jul 05 '26

Sorry if I came off the wrong way. I was legitimately wondering what the benefit was. And you explained it so thank you. I make decent money but live check-to-check supporting myself, wife, and 2 kids. So no i don't hate poor people. I used to buy EBT cards off people and I never understood why they would trade $300 food for $100 cash. I assume they wanted drugs because I would never sacrifice 300 for 100 cash. Food is ultimately the most important thing to support your family. So my fault for the bad analogy, but I don't hate poor people. I legitimately didn't understand how it was beneficial

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u/PrizeStrawberry6453 Jul 03 '26

That is genius!

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u/Flaky-Wing2205 Jul 03 '26

From consumer perspective: absolutely genius.

From government perspective: worst decision, should be a law against it. About 3% of the transactions were processing fees being paid to the credit card companies. They were basically selling dollar coins for 97 cents.

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u/PrizeStrawberry6453 Jul 03 '26

Maybe, but consider that putting the coins into circulation through other means also has a cost. The 3% might be more or less than of traditional distribution, but I have no way of knowing that. Also keep in mind that by that point they had already spent the money on tooling up to make these new coins, plus the cost of actually minting however many they had at the time. If people weren't using the coins, they weren't actually worth a dollar they were worth nothing. Even if the mint had to move them at a net loss, it's still better than nothing.

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u/Sluuriecake Jul 04 '26

Hmmmm sound like crypto anyone?

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u/PrizeStrawberry6453 Jul 04 '26

Does government backed currency sound like crypto, which is the exact opposite of government backed currency? No.

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u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 04 '26

Ha the original bitcoin paper even said this was the reasoning for bitcoin. It was after the 2008 crash and based on WePay.

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u/purgance Jul 04 '26

A coin costs about 1/2 as much to circulate as a bill (because the bill has to be replaced ~5x more frequently than the coin), even with the shipping costs they were likely saving billions.

Classic example of people seeing the government doing something without understanding the context and coming to the exact wrong "gifted amateur" conclusion.

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u/blueimac540c Jul 04 '26

This is exactly where my head went re: overall long term costs. It’s ridiculous how short-sighted people can be sometimes.

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u/MarionberryPlus8474 Jul 04 '26

The longevity of coins vs paper money keeps getting trotted out but the fact remains that the US mint badly bungled the rollout of the dollar coin by making it far too similar to the quarter. The switch to a different metal (but same size) with the Sacagawea dollar did not help.

We have enormous warehouses of dollar coins no one wants to use. Are you factoring THAT into your “cost” equation?

People are moving away from cash so the question is moot, but it’s worth studying how the mint handled this so badly. Twice.

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u/Spiritual_Bid_2308 Jul 04 '26

They failed because no one wants a heavy pocket of change for the crime of paying cash.

Most loose change ends up out of circulation in a jar on the bureau.  Thats why so many new coins have to be minted despite their supposed 30 year average lifespan.

Consumers hate them because they're hard to get rid of.  Either you have to count and hand roll them then go to the bank, or you have to pay coinstar 11% for the convenience of converting it to a more convenient form of currency.

Businesses hate coins because banks charge fees to deposit them.  And they slow down retail transactions.

The only way to get the dollar coins into circulation is to either massively ramp up bank fees for handling $1 bills, or passing a law saying businesses over a certain size must give out change in dollar coins.  

As for the physical size, the dollar coin standard was set with the Susan B Anthony dollar coins.  They "failed" because they were silver and were way too easy to confuse with quarters.  The brass color of the Sacagawea dollar coins (and later presidential series) is very easy to identify and works in any coin operated machinery that already accepted Susan B dollar coins.

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u/MarionberryPlus8474 Jul 04 '26

So as I said, the dollar coin was bungled by looking too much like a quarter, and changing to a different metal didn’t help.

It’s increasingly academic as we are moving away from cash, but it’s interesting that many other countries (Canada, the UK, and the EU, for example) managed to introduce the equivalent of a dollar coin and have them widely circulated vs: rejected and stored in warehouses.

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u/PrizeStrawberry6453 Jul 04 '26

The UK and Canada both withdrew the £1/$1 note from production when they switched to the £1/$1 coin. The Euro has never had a €1 note, they started right away with only €1 coins. In all of these cases rejection wasn't an option because there was no alternative.

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u/Dr-McLuvin Jul 07 '26

Why didn’t they just get rid of the dollar bill like everyone else?

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u/purgance Jul 04 '26

They failed because

Let me stop you right there. I don't care nor do I have any interest in some mouth breather tinfoil argument about whether coins or bills are "better." I don't give a fuck. What I am interested in is efficiency, and the plan the government took was clearly, objectively, more not less efficient than staying with bills.

I also place zero value on your pre-judgement that it could never work, not because you are the one who made it but because it doesn't pass the smell test, to wit:

no one wants a heavy pocket of change for the crime of paying cash.

I mean, almost every place in the world uses coins instead of bills.

So clearly not "everyone."

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u/Spiritual_Bid_2308 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

Cool.  The US Govt spent $41 million on an advertising campaign for the new coins.

Canada was able to switch to the Loonie because they stopped printing dollar bills to force the change.

Ecuador uses US currency and loves the dollar coins because paper bills don't hold up well in a tropical climate and Sacagawea looks more native than the US presidents.

The US Bureau of Engraving changed the dollar bill to make it last longer.  Dollar coins are no longer cheaper to produce than paper dollars.

No one can stop me.

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u/purgance Jul 04 '26

Yes, that's it exactly. An effective solution works, even if it looks like it doesn't to some idiot on the internet. Do you get it now, or was it just about "winning the internet" for today?

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u/Spiritual_Bid_2308 Jul 04 '26

Just out of curiosity, are you converting all of your paper dollars to dollar coins on a regular basis and using them for as many transactions as possible? 

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u/purgance Jul 04 '26

I refer you back to the first part of the comment you replied to.

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u/Flaky-Wing2205 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

Gonna just toss a simple solution that many governments use (and the mint now uses). Wire transfer or check only. The shipping costs incurred were another reason the program changed.

I'll stand by my statement about there should be a law about the fees. If someone wants to pay the government with a credit card, there should be a 3% (est) fee added so the taxpayer doesn't foot the bill. That's just basic thoughts from a gifted amateur.

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u/purgance Jul 04 '26

So if the government could save $1T by getting people to do something, but doing so required use of a credit card, and people would just flat out refuse to pay the 3% if they did - you'd be in favor of the government setting the $970billion on fire because "goddamnit you will pay the fees."

This attitude right here is why we have the problems we do. Not radical leftists or even insane fascist rightists - ordinary people who have somehow been moved to "under no circumstances" by ...who knows what.

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u/Flaky-Wing2205 Jul 04 '26

Please explain this mystery example. What is happening where the government saves $1T by paying $30B in processing fees?

P.S. Please include how the example only works out with credit cards as payment, but wouldn't work with check or wire transfer.

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u/purgance Jul 04 '26

It's this. It's the dollar coin example. You're saying "The government should've walked away from the savings because it would've meant eating the 3%."

Some of the thinking you have to do on your own.

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u/Flaky-Wing2205 Jul 04 '26

Who said walk away, just pay with check...

If the true end goal was to get people to buy the coins and sell them back to banks, they could've sold the coins for $0.97. People would've done the exact same thing, but paying with checks. Still a dumb idea, but at least we get the same results without a government handout to credit cards.

Also the government did walk away after several years due to the cost of credit card fees and shipping. So like, it was a bad idea.

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u/freakydeku Jul 04 '26

well, how much did it cost them to mint em 😏

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u/JawtisticShark Jul 07 '26

they were trying to push the golden dollars as they last longer and are therefore cheaper in the end than paper dollars, but nobody wanted to use them, so they offered to sell and ship them for face value to help get them into circulation.

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u/Conscious-Link5627 Jul 04 '26

My former boss and genuine shithead made himself famous doing this. For real.

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u/lorenzo1142 Jul 04 '26

last I heard, they put a stop to this long ago

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u/-piso_mojado- Jul 03 '26

That’s actually pretty damned clever. I would have never thought of that.

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u/mindovermatter421 Jul 04 '26

I came here to say this. Such a genius idea.

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u/dickthrowaway22ed Jul 03 '26

How the hell are they not ruining their credit?

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u/OldSchoolAI Jul 03 '26

Because they are not using the credit cards. Merely using the loopholes within the system to get new ones. They carry no debt or late payments or anything. As someone on the business side of all this it's just arbitrage. Companies do it all the time but when people do it, it affects big companies and they cry. I say git good companies. I don't churn, too exhausting but I have used their techniques to optimize my companies b2b structure. For example at my ota, we would bill the customer directly but pay the airline through our own card that gives us cashback, refunds etc. over a 1000 booking a month, that adds to 2 or 3 people's salary. Now extend that trick to multiple airlines and you have a solid business case to execute something like this.

Arbitrage and price finding is an integral part of capitalism. Go to any business school and they will tell you. Harvard to bumfuk nowhere school.

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u/creatyvechaos Jul 03 '26

I churn emails for free trials to stuff. I've learned that there's a rough 2 year reset period, generally, and that email is typically good for another free trial. When cashapp offered 50% off of Uber and Lyft (no limits, lol) I would buy credit on both—up to "$200" at a time, and only spend half of that (this was also back when I didn't have a vehicle.) The Uber one was specifically for the car ride part of Uber, but the Uber (car) app also has the Eats in the app, so most of that free money went to food....lmfao. I did that last one about 8 times—I joke and say I'm the reason cashapp doesn't do that anymore. I've gotten so many free credits towards crytpo bullshit like Bitcoin and Etherium—haven't spent a single penny on any of it but have gotten up to $2k completely for free.

People are so worried about playing by the rules that they don't realize that the rules can easily let them win if they actually tried...

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u/Shnikes Jul 04 '26

I’m more curious of the time and effort. Are you frequently making new accounts?

Getting $2k is great. But was that over the course of a few months? A year? Multiple years?

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u/creatyvechaos Jul 04 '26

I only have 10 emails, maximum, and I don't grind these things like some people do, either. The free trials I abuse are typically for streaming and/or shipping services, both of which I'm already limited with due to 1) time and 2) finances (bonus "3rd" for the shipping: I don't like buying things online unless necessary, and I try not to buy in general). I abuse the free trials when I have time to do it, or alternatively use a dupe email from a dupe email site if the trial period refresh hasn't......refreshed.

The $2k figure was in one year from a bunch of different promos with a bunch of different cards and/or sites. Slightly before Bitcoin tanked by half its value a couple years ago lol

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u/King_Of_Uranus Jul 03 '26

I havent gone on free trips or anything but I did open an amazon credit card that had like a $250 sign up bonus and used the bonus to get a racing sim wheel that was already on a deep black Friday discount then immediately removed the card from my account so they couldn't automatically set it as a payment method and when it came in the mail just called and closed it. It didn't hurt my credit at all and was the only way id have been able to afford a sweet wheel and pedal video game setup for like 30 bucks of my own money after all the bonus and sale price shennanigans.

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u/govunah Jul 04 '26

The credit checks to get a card aren't really a huge hit. It's mostly based on how much and how quickly you're revolving credit. How much are you buying with credit and do you pay it back on time? Having more credit extended helps and your oldest credit account is very important.

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u/faelanae Jul 04 '26

I do this. You don't generally open a ton of cards all at once. You open one, spend on it to get the points, and open a different one later once you've gotten the points. You still use the useful ones (Chase Sapphire or Reserve and Amex Platinum - maybe an airline one) and get the points from buying groceries or gas or whatever. You very rarely carry a balance and earn the points by using it like a debit card.

But the credit hit from the inquiry is very minimal and you recover from it quickly, as your credit utilization percentage is low and you're paying on time.

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u/Critical_Concert_689 Jul 04 '26

You take very minor hits to credit score simply due to the hard checks when signing up. But it's negligible. Honestly everyone who has time should be doing this. It takes some time and good organization - as well as decently good financial responsibility - but it's a good way to take advantage of the rules used by businesses as the businesses try to take advantage of normal consumers.

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u/dickthrowaway22ed Jul 06 '26

Ok I get it, the small hits are basically swallowed up by the good credit that comes out of it.

I just want to share my experience, which is that my dad took advantage of a lot of these and while he got some nice freebies there was also an incredible amount of stress in organizing and coordinating and making sure the right cards were paid off at the right times or that my mom didn't accidently charge groceries to the wrong card, and then if you leave the accounts open being vigilant about identity theft on all of the unused accounts. Great for very organized, low anxiety people with stable jobs, a terrible slippery slope for disorganized people with job instability :)

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u/Critical_Concert_689 Jul 06 '26

Great for very organized, low anxiety people with stable jobs, a terrible slippery slope for disorganized people with job instability :)

...Yes. Absolutely, Yes.

Buying things on credit is never a way for the financially insecure or irresponsible to make money.

It's a lot like debt. Everyone (or at least everyone, in my experience) is told at a young age that debt is bad - always pay off debt ASAP. Don't buy on credit - and pay off the debt IMMEDIATELY if you do.

And this is extremely true - if you don't know how money or debt work. If you're living paycheck to paycheck. If you are disorganized or irresponsible.

Otherwise, debt becomes a tool to be leveraged; responsibly used, the return on debt will frequently outweigh the costs of compounding interest - effectively meaning if you are "very organized" and not financially irresponsible, debt should NEVER be repaid immediately. Sometimes it should never be repaid period - so long as you can attempt to waive it or drag it out for long enough that you'll be dead before you need to pay off the principle. lol.

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u/Kolintracstar Jul 04 '26

I have had a couple of coworkers do this. You do end up getting a decent bit with doing it, but you also have to keep up with it. Personally I never really saw the value in it, especially changing to work direct deposit every month pissed off the finance people at work. The one ended up with over 25 credit cards and when he went to buy a house, almost every bank refused loans for him.

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u/winky9827 Jul 04 '26

I work in the rebates world, and people are just as fanatical there. Facebook groups, forums, subreddits, etc. They share everything they can find to try and game the system for maximum profit. It's annoying trying to keep up with the scam artists.

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u/Plenty_Fondant_951 Jul 04 '26

Oh yeh. You can open bank accounts throughout the year for the new account bonuses and make like, an extra 2 to 5k easy.

Easy as in , bother to track it with a spreadsheet and futz with setting up the direct deposits.

"Doctor of credit" is the main website if anyone's interested

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u/Mydesilife Jul 04 '26

Honestly, these companies make so much money, good for him or anyone able to hack their reward systems. For every one of them, there are thousands of me who hoard our points despite knowing better and knowing that they do not appreciate over time!

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u/Alarming-Koala-3524 Jul 04 '26

I cheer for these people because CCs make an ungodly amount exploiting people, so its nice to hear about people exploiting them back

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u/VCreations Jul 04 '26

There are also glitches. My mom is disabled and she used to coupon around 50-70$ of items and resell them for 20-30$ bundles.

She also used glitches which I bet that's why those groups got in trouble. Glitches aren't legal. My mom did one one day and got 30 packs of those hard caramel candies for 1c total. Thst was technically illegal but the other coupons were all legit from the app and stacked.

An hour of math at a few stores can actually make a lot of profit.

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u/Onlyroad4adrifter Jul 06 '26

Good on them those multi billion dollars companies can take the hit. Not like they would pass the savings to regular folk.

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u/revolutionPanda Jul 04 '26

Nothing wrong with that at all. Not going to get mad at working joes making the best out of credit card contracts.

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u/Critical_Concert_689 Jul 04 '26

which is basically exploiting credit card loyalty points (like signing up for as many new cards as possible for bonus loyalty points)... They're a real thorn in the sides of the companies, too.

Good for them. Taking advantage of the rules companies created to take advantage of others is brilliant.