FWF Heavy Hitters: Who is making more than $1000/month from FWF type finance tactics?

oops wrong thread

Every vendor that uses FW Cash Back is probably going through their books to audit returns. You'd better have that money ready to either return to the vendor or use to retain counsel.

It's unlikely given the guy's amount is like 18k total, so per retailer is pretty small...might not be large enough to be an issue...I think...given how many times I've not gotten CashBack from completely legit purchases, it's a little baffling to me how they run the CashBack

It's Back! Time to get really Heavy.

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/1188671/

ironfist99 said:   It's Back! Time to get really Heavy.

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/1188671/

Nah, I'd actually lose weight from the diarrhea

Very much new to the game. Few months old. Made $500+ as Staples opened door for 25 off 75/100 few months back. Entered about 50 times thru that door and finally was caught. Now I can not enter online. Waiting for other doors to open. Meantime I make few bucks thru buy/sell GC's on eBay.

ma91pmh said:   You can reach big hitter status on the miles/points front. I am doing regular quarterly app-o-raman netting 250-450k points worth $2-4k in travel so at the top end that is over $1000 a month which sure as hell ain't bad.

Since this is the HH thread, care to share the details from your last AOR?

My two stories about odd ways of making money. And let me say that I was in my early 20s and a starving college student. Probably wouldn't do these again. First, the slightly unethical one (similar to the Sony points story):

I was waiting to cash a check at a busy branch of a US Bank in a downtown urban area. The line was pretty long and the guy in front of me turned around and said "Have you been waiting for more than five minutes?" I said I had. He said "They have a guarantee that if you wait for more than five minutes to see a teller, they'll deposit $5 into your account. Tell them when you get to the front." I did mention it and they did give me $5. Since I worked down the block and walked by this branch regularly, I noticed that they almost always had a long line at lunch time, especially on Fridays. So I always made sure to stop in and do my transactions when the lines were long.

Not that lucrative. But it gets better. I found out this was called the "Five Star Service Guarantee." (I don't think they have this anymore) Their website had a list of things they guaranteed, only one of which was the five minute to see a teller bit. They also guaranteed that if you emailed them a question, they would respond with an answer within 24 hours. I emailed them a legitimate question and it took them almost two days. I quickly learned that they never responded within 24 hours. So every week I would come up with some random question about a transaction or service or account feature just so I could wait two days for the response and then request the $5. They always gave the $5.

Then I stepped it up and started emailing them questions every day. And I probably got 30 or 40 $5 credits before "Barbara" the CSR manager emailed to say that she had put a post-it note with my name on all the computers in the office and that all her workers were to direct my questions to her and that I was no longer entitled to the 5 star service guarantee. I was surprised it took that long to get caught. So I just told Barbara that I understood, but that I was only taking advantage of the simple fact that the bank had made a promise they were not willing to dedicate the resources to following through on. Total take, probably $400. A lot of effort involved, but it became a game for me.

Second scheme (and this one was kind of crazy and involved a bit of risk but was more lucrative), there was a sweepstakes put on by Cinemark where if you bought a large soda, there was a little pull ticket on it as a contest (like the monopoly game at mcdonalds). Except every ticket had a code that could be redeemed for at least 500 American AAdvantage miles if you went to the sweepstakes website and entered the code. I think 1 out of 50 tickets had 5,000 miles and then there were very rare higher prizes.

With every sweepstakes like this you can usually send a self-addressed stamped envelope to get a free gamepiece. I sent at least 400 SASEs. They realized they were all from the same person and sent back just a few envelopes with hundreds of gamepieces in each. So I had all these codes, which I sold on eBay. I put them up on a rolling basis so as to avoid saturating the market. Each of the 500 mile game pieces sold for between $8-$15. The 5,000 mile gamepieces all sold for $70-$90. I wasn't selling miles, which was against the AAdvantage terms. I was selling codes. Probably spent $200 on stamps and pulled in around $1,500 on eBay.

There were limitations on the promotion. I think it was that each individual person could only redeem two codes or 10,000 miles total (unless you won a big one, which I didn't). I don't remember exactly. It was in 2005. I do know that I used two of the 5,000 codes myself but I couldn't redeem any more. I remember the same people would always bid on eBay, but then they would stop bidding once they had personally reached the limits of the promotion. So I would post on FlyerTalk to steer more people there to bid.

Also placing downward pressure on the price of the codes was the fact that anyone could go to one of the theaters and buy a large soda (probably for $6) and get the code that way.

There is a prepaid card called Upside. They used to have it so that you could have funds direct deposited into your account easily. They gave you a routing and account number as soon as you signed up. You got one point for each dollar loaded onto the card. $4500 equaled $50 CashBack.

This version of the card was for teens so I signed my brother up and my "teen" self and easily made $50 a week on both cards. Unfortunately the party only lasted three months before they blocked the accounts due to "fraud". Luckily there were no funds in there at the time and I did not feel like dealing with it so I just shut it down.

Now you have to send in a copy of your drivers license before they will give you the routing and account number for direct deposit. You can still load funds by credit card (150 max load at 2.50 per load/1000 per month. I have a 1.75% visa so I was coming out on top) or by bank transfer through their site(you have to fill out a form and send it in and it can take a week for the funds to be available). I tried signing up again to see if maybe I can get the routing and account number anyway but I am banned.