<p>I love this! Grad student paid half his tuition with mail in rebates: 'quote]"Tuition for this semester was $4,500," he said. "I paid over $2,500 of it with prepaid debit cards [from rebates] and a little over $1,000 of it with rebate checks."
He estimates he entered between 200 and 250 prepaid debit cards into the University's online bill pay system. After all the rebates were counted, he was left with less than $1,000 to pay out of pocket.
<p>A while ago the US Mint (?) was offering free shipping on purchases of 1000 US Dollar Coins. Of 'course no one wants them, so people would buy them with cash back credit cards (I think they go up to 5%) and then just take the coins to the bank and deposit them. Free $50 everytime, minus the gas and time cost of getting them to the bank. This no longer exists by the way.</p>
<p>I love it! But no doubt a so called independent judge will rule against it.</p>
<p>Judges who want to retain their position conveniently see themselves only as the guardians of “legal procedure”, (aka, always agreeing with the police/prosecution, so long as all the i’s dotted and t’s are crossed), never mind the question of real justice. </p>
<p>It’s good career move for them, albeit contrary to their sworn oath.</p>
<p>How much time does it take to find things with 100% rebates (surely they are rare), buy them and re-sell them? He mentions 11 minutes to fill out a rebate form, but he also has to identify the products, purchase them, post them on eBay, answer any inquiries from potential purchasers, then ship them. Why not just use that time to work at a job? (I guess because you don’t get press coverage for a job.)</p>
<p>It appears he finds these items mostly on a list. Once he’s gotten everything down to a science, it’s possible he has the time per item down to 30 minutes a piece. At nearly $12 per item profit, it’s possible that this is a more effective way of making money than a job would yield. Additionally, he chooses his hours, and it seems that he enjoys doing it.</p>
Why the disparaging commentary? People find different activities that work for them. I’ll bet there is a great sense of enjoyment in this “hunt” as well, so I applaud this gentleman for his creative income stream production and way of getting entertainment (“fun”) as well. . It is equivalent to a “job” for him. I do not for one second think he did this for the publicity.</p>
<p>(oops, I said just what Vladenschlutte said. Apologies for the duplication. Obviously I agree, Vladenschlutte)</p>
<p>This PHD student has too much time on his hands.</p>
<p>How much time to input those 200-250 prepaid cards into the system?</p>
<p>How much time to find those “free” stuff, get the rebates, resell stuff on eBay?</p>
<p>A lot.<br>
And I don’t think the rebate process is that enjoyable! Now, I avoid the mail-in rebates (actually have to mail in the forms etc) as much as possible, I only do the Staples Easy Rebates.</p>
<p>He works a full time job on top of the cards…</p>
<p>4kids, I can easily run 200 credit cards in less than an hour. For someone who works with numbers all day, it wouldn’t take much time.</p>
<p>And frankly, who cares? He’s making it work. Why do people have to be so negative… I do online surveys for a few hundred dollars a year. Worth the time? Probably not but I like doing them and it’s extra gas money. Also did Cha Cha for a while.</p>
<p>The fact he used the rebates to pay for college is only somewhat interesting. It’s only profit of $11.91/item on average. The $40 rebate balances out the actual purchase. If it’s applied to college there is still a $40 payment he made.</p>
<p>I’d be willing to bet a MIR this guy frequents fatwallet. I’ve tried to go to a few stores to snag those sorts of deals in the past, and you always wind up seeing people like this walking out with a stack of 20 copies of Barbie’s Magical Pony Adventure to sell on e-bay for a $2 profit.</p>
I’m not being negative. I’m just wondering whether it is good idea for rest of us to do it too.</p>
<p>I also wondering if his input of 200-250 prepaid cards into his unversity’s system would causes his unversity change the policy on credit card payment. Like adding a convenience fee etc.</p>
<p>Why don’t you tell us more on online surveys too?</p>
<p>I do surveys through Opinion Outpost and Pinecone Research. OO generally screens you out of surveys but you get more of them. Compensation for these varies. I generally get about 1-2 a week from PR and I’ve never been screened out of a survey. They pay $3 per survey. I think I made around $200 through them last year and another $100 or so through OO. I’ve probably made about $150 through another one too but I don’t use them anymore because they moved towards raffles instead of payments.</p>
<p>I used to be sick for months on end so it was a way to make money from bed.</p>
<p>Racin, if you read the article, you wouldn’t have to bet anything. It says he goes on there.</p>
<p>Haha, read right up the paragraph before he says he used there. These sorts of strategies also work best in states with low sales tax. I’ve known a few people online that have used the fact that Amazon will offer a particular amount of money for a used game (stated on their website), and then found sales where the same game goes on sale at places like Toys R Us or Game Stop. I’ve used it a few times when there was a Buy 2 Get 1 Free sale with only two games I was interested in buy. Much harder to turn a large profit when you’re paying out 9.25% sales tax up front, though. My brother would have a much easier time with it in Delaware. ;)</p>