**Update: Deal is dead.**
Today on eBay’s daily deals page is a great deal on a MacBook Pro
- MacBook Pro 13.3 Inch
- MSRP – $1199
- eBay Price – $804
- Amazon Price – $949
- Amazon Fees + Shipping (educated guess of $6 for UPS) – $63.29
- Profit – $81.71
That is pretty darn good. But you shouldn’t stop there. The deal can be leveraged further with eBay Bucks and shopping portals, and credit cards.
eBay Buck is eBay’s rewards program. For every dollar you spend you will earn 2% back in eBay Bucks that can be used for future purchases. So for this purchase you can earn 1600 eBay Bucks or $16.
Next are shopping portals. Currently the best shopping portal for eBay is iConsumer. This is a relatively new shopping portal. So, your guess is as good as mine if you ever see that money. I will stick to uPromise because I don’t like spreading out my shopping portal use. uPromise is offering 1% cash back.
The next thing to consider is using a credit card to maximize your profit. If you want to get creative here is how you could really maximize the deal. Go to an office store like Staples, Office Max, Office Depot, etc and buy eBay gift cards with your Chase Ink card and get 5x points. Another option if you have the old version of the Amex Blue Cash is to do the same thing at a grocery store and get 5x as well. If you do that you the deal would break down further as follows:
- eBay Bucks – 1600
- uPromise – $8
- Credit Card – 4000
Together that adds up to another $64 dollars off or 8%. With this included you are looking at a potential profit of $144. Pretty good for 1 laptop.