Discounted gift cards on Ebay?

[kgibbons]

Hello all,

Wondering if anybody has any info on the HUGE market there seems to be on Ebay for discounted gift cards?

If you browse around their "Gift Certificate" category, you'll find quite a few big ticket giftcards for stores like Wal-Mart, Sears, Target -- these cards are in the in the range of like $500+, with BuyItNow's for like $450 or less.

Of course one wants to believe if they bought one of these cards it would be legit. But why wouldn't this seller simply use the card themselves and get the full $500 value from it?

I know when something usually seems to good to be true.... it generally is. But Ebay is allowing a TON of these auctions on its site, so maybe these sellers have a loophole to get these giftcards at a discount?

Any info on this?

[malfunct]

Hello all,

Wondering if anybody has any info on the HUGE market there seems to be on Ebay for discounted gift cards?

If you browse around their "Gift Certificate" category, you'll find quite a few big ticket giftcards for stores like Wal-Mart, Sears, Target -- these cards are in the in the range of like $500+, with BuyItNow's for like $450 or less.

Of course one wants to believe if they bought one of these cards it would be legit. But why wouldn't this seller simply use the card themselves and get the full $500 value from it?

I know when something usually seems to good to be true.... it generally is. But Ebay is allowing a TON of these auctions on its site, so maybe these sellers have a loophole to get these giftcards at a discount?

Any info on this?

I don't know about all the cards there, but I would think that a significant portion of them are "cash back" gifts when purchasing another product. For instance I saw lots of deals where you could buy an xbox and get $20 in store credit. The stores do this because its cheaper for them to give store credit (which gets spent in store) than a discount that never returns to them.

Anyways, lots of people that get the gift cards would much rather have cash so they sell the card off for a small discount.