So after discovering that earlier that, as a international Mechanical Turk user, I will not be receiving my earnings in the form of cash, I have come to the conclusion that my only option is to purchase gift cards from the Amazon US site - since that is the only site that international users are allowed to spend their earnings on, which is ridiculous, since they only ship a handful of items outside of the US, and when they do, the shipping fees are hundreds of dollars - and resell them on eBay. It will be a loss, but it is better than having my hard earned earnings just sitting there, useless. I would prefer to sell the e-gift cards on Ebay, as it would be much easier. But after reading their policy, they do not allow the sale of e-gift cards, which... great -_- Another dead end. It seems almost impossible to actually use the Mturk earnings if you are outside of the US or India, which are the only countries that Amazon will pay cash directly into their bank accounts. But I have been looking on Ebay and there are sellers selling e-gift cards without penalization seemingly. What is going on? Is it that Ebay just is not aware of them, or is selling e-gift cards allowed and Ebay have not updated their policy?
I've also seen gift cards being sold on Ebay so it can be hard to tell whether some people merely get away with failing to abide by the rules. That said, Amazon gift cards often are in great demand. Even though you may not be able to sell them on Ebay at the moment, you could take try sites which sell discounted gift cards. Take a look at sites like giftcardgranny.
I think it's a matter of people getting away with it as it's hard to track down and police. There are other places you can trade the e-gift cards, but it's harder to catch people unless they use the same user name and email addresses. I used to work for a marketing company and it was up to us to chase it and report it when we saw people reselling coupons given free.
Thanks for the input guys, but I have just found out that with the Amazon gift card balance that you earn from Mturk as an international worker, you cannot purchase other gift cards with it. Not physical or ecode ones, so I am stuck with the prospect of having the US Amazon site ship internationally eligible items - through Amazon Global - to my UK address, and then selling them on Ebay. I could do drop shipping, but if there is an issue with one of the products and the buyer wants a refund, I'll be stuck and will have to pay all sorts of fees to return the product. This is a nightmare. There is literally no way to make use of the money earned through Mturk as n international worker. If anyone has any idea on how I can liquify that money though, please chime in.
@ DreekLass why don't you contact Amazon directly and explain your situatio?. Also, I am wondering why you can't use the cards on Amazon UK? I think Amazon will offer suggestions to you, and you should be able to use the cards you earned. I hope so anyway! I understand you would like to sell them, but products are certainly better than nothing!
I don't work via Amazon MTurk, so I don't know the amounts you're talking about. If there's enough money, you might be able to use them to purchase items and instead of having them shipped to you, have them shipped to the buyer? It would be like drop shipping, I guess, although I'm not that familiar with how drop shipping works. Electronic items are always in high demand, so should be easy to unload, and then you'd get paid via PayPal or credit/debit cards by the buyers.
Ke Gordan, I tried and so have thousands of other international turkers over the last ten years. They aren't going to change this any time soon. If only I'd known prior to signing up. They strictly only allow you to buy from US Amazon or the Global one, which are both crappy, and I don't want to blow all my money on shipping fees. Diane Lane, I wish it was that simple. They don't allow you to buy anything digital with your gift balance. The dropshipping thing was my plan b, but if there's an issue with the product, or some other discrepancy with the customer, I'm going to be the one who has to sort it out. All I want is my money. I don't want to be a dispute manager go between for customers and Amazon. This really sucks. Ebay also lrohibits dropshipping. But I guess people still do it. Then there are the ebay and PayPal fees that I'll have to pay to sell the items. Thanks for your input guys.
Well, another idea (a long shot) is find a US friend who uses Amazon will buy them off you? I never use Amazon except for e-books and books, and when I did a few tasks with Amazon gift certificates I 'sold' them to friends who wanted books shipped in the US. It depends on how much you have, and you need to decide whether it's worth doing the tasks for money you can't use for what you want.
I have contemplated this idea too. But it is still sort of useless. I know one person from the US, though we sort of don't talk anymore. But having to wait until they want to order something in order to get my money is a pain in the ass, to be honest, and they aren't rich either, so I can't see them buying often. Of course, they would tell their friends and family. But it just seems to messy, especially given the history that I have with her.
I really don't understand why there aren't more money making ventures available to those living outside of the United States. Surely there are people in other countries that have online companies and could use workers? I hear it over and over, but obviously there have to be people who could start up companies that would benefit those living in their own countries? Is there some sort of policy in place in other countries that prohibits these types of opportunities, or makes them prohibitively expensive and not worth it?
Well, I hear getting the tax info for all the different countries is hard for them. But other smaller sites do it. So Amazon could too, I feel. It's just a way for them to get international workers to work for them, only to pay their earnings back to them.
