Warning to Gift Card Resellers! The Plastic Merchant Checks Are Bouncing

Update: TPM has sent out an email to sellers with an explanation for the recent issues.

Dear Seller,

Unfortunately, Mike is very sick and has had to be hospitalized. We are working on things and hope to have an update for you very soon. Sorry in advance for any issues this may have caused, and please be patient with us.

The Plastic Merchant is a private gift card buying and selling platform. If you’re a gift card re-seller you have probably heard of them or done business with them in the past. There seems to be some major issues with The Plastic Merchant (TPM) now. There’s almost no activity on the site for over a month and check are bouncing. There’s reports of this from Miles to Memories and Vinh on Twitter. Some large four figure checks have bounced. Even a $5 check would not clear at this time, so there’s np money at all in their bank account.

Guru’s Wrap-Up

This is terrible news for those who do business in bulk with TPM. They’ve had issues in the past, but I don’t think it lasted this long. I have never dealt with them, but they’re pretty popular, so I’m sure there’s readers who have sold them gift cards. One thing that you can do for now is to definitely not submit any new sale orders. Hopefully there’s some fixable issues and checks start clearing, but this doesn’t look good at all.

Let me know if you were affected or if you have any other info that could help other readers.