8 ms·
notice how amazon gift cards go for higher than face value on ebay https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=amazon+gift+card&_sacat=0&rt=nc&LH_Sold=1&LH_
by compsciphd 6y ago
notice how amazon gift cards go for higher than face value on ebay
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=amazon+gift+card&_sacat=0&rt=nc&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=amazon+gift+c...
My only logic is that its a form of money laundering.
- strogonoff 6y agoPardon me, but how is gift card price related and how could gift cards ever be cheaper than face value (surely someone somewhere would be working at a loss)?
- sammorrowdrums 6y agoThe question is why wouldn't someone buy from Amazon
- inetknght 6y agoI wouldn't, and haven't, bought anything from Amazon since Amazon facilitates and perpetuates fraud.
- sammorrowdrums 6y ago... Which would include gift cards for amazon, indirectly paying Amazon doesn't change that. [edit] - I'm not sure parent comment was replying to the gift card point. My comment was specifically about why buy Amazon Gift Cards from a third party ever.
- sct202 6y agoIf they're using fraudulent payment sources (stolen credit cards) it may be harder for them to use them on Amazon versus somewhere else.
- sammorrowdrums 6y agoYeah, I was sort of implying "unless there is something dodgy going on"
- AnssiH 6y agoThe buyer may not have supported payment methods, especially overseas. E.g. most German cards don't work at amazon.com (unless things have changed recently), but work at PayPal.
- Larrikin 6y agoMy credit cards regularly offer 5% cashback for grocery stores, drug stores and other physical locations that sell gift cards. They also offer 5 percent back for pay pal purchases which can be combined with places like Raise.com to get a lot more than 5 percent saved in total, and gift cards almost always go for under full price. If you're doing an online purchase you can combine with a coupon collector site, credit cards, and gift cards to get steep discounts. When I shopped at H&M their gift cards regularly had 15-35% discounts from gift card sites and they will accept any piece of fabric in store for a discount coupon, making the clothes close to fifty percent off in total. When shopping online it adds possibly two minutes extra to check out once you get used to the flow. It's not recommended for gifts as it mucks up the return flow but gift cards are usually only for large retail outlets so it's always possible to hold on to it and purchase something later. This is all legitimate use and not a flow for money laundering.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- benmanns 6y agoYou can buy unlimited gift cards directly from the merchant for face value, so that sets the price ceiling. Gift cards are strictly worse than cash, and individuals with gift cards who want to sell them value them less than face value, otherwise they’d keep/spend them. The only legitimate cases I can think of are if you are spending an eBay gift card to buy one you value more, or if you somehow get extra cash back or etc to justify buying from eBay over the gift card issuer.
- strogonoff 6y agoInteresting. I thought gift cards were used by people who lack a supported payment method, and face value was the floor.
- compsciphd 6y agowe aren't talking credit card gift cards (i.e. visa/master card brandedc cards, we are talking store branded cards, and while amazon cards are the closest to cash of all of them, due to the the number of products they sell, you can still buy them for face value from amazon, why pay more?)
- whoknew1122 6y agoLots of lower income areas have places (some of which are legit, most of them not) that will purchase gift cards for 50 cents on the dollar or less. The idea is that someone might gift you a giftcard to, say, Home Depot, but you need food rather than lumber. So you sell the gift card to a broker at a steep discount and pocket the money. But this also a good way to launder money, most often for low-level drug transactions. Drug addicts steal credit cards or pass bad checks to buy gift cards. Then either give the cards to a dealer directly, or to a broker. The broker gives them cash, which they take to the dealer.
- 0goel0 6y agoThat's not money laundering. The gift card in that scenario is still "dirty".
- whoknew1122 6y agoFunctionally, the gift card is clean as long as it continues to be valid. And most of them do. The user of the gift card isn't the purchaser, so they can use it without (much) fear. People can also abuse return policies. Most places will give you a gift card if you return unused merchandise without a receipt. So people will shoplift small, high-value items from one store and return them to another. Get a gift card, and then sell the gift card. The cash isn't traceable, and the broker gets a tidy profit.
- thebean11 6y ago> Most places will give you a gift card if you return unused merchandise without a receipt. Usually only if you paid with a credit card, so there's a record you made the purchase no?
- whoknew1122 6y agoThat hasn't been my experience. Policies may have changed, although I'm not sure how they'd know if purchased something using a credit card if you don't have your receipt. Most places typically will provide the refund if you have the merchandise and an ID. The ID helps loss prevent determine if someone's returning an abnormally large amount of goods, but there's no shortage of mules for this kind of scam. I'm not in the loss prevention field (anymore), and my knowledge of these sorts of scams is a few years old.
- stuckindider 6y agoIt's a simple way to launder stolen credit cards. Buy gift cards with a stolen credit card Sell the gift cards for cheap to random people on the internet for crypto
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoNothing is laundered here though. You have a bunch of cash or crypto that has no provenance.
- dkersten 6y agoGoing by comments here it seems that most people equate "turning stolen CC into money" as laundering, even though that money is dirty and indeed not laundered. The IRS or whoever isn't gonna be fooled.
- compsciphd 6y agoto quote wikipedia "Money laundering is the illegal process of concealing the origins of money obtained illegally by passing it through a complex sequence of banking transfers or commercial transactions. " I'm not sure how turning stolen CCs into money is fundamentally different.
- dkersten 6y agoBecause it doesn't, by itself, conceal the origins. Note that "unknown" origin doesn't count, as far as the IRS is concerned, they will still question where it came from and expect an answer. As far as I understand it, the process of moving money through complex transactions is to make it look like it came from somewhere legitimate and making it hard to trace back to something that isn't, by mixing it with legitimate funding in a hard-to-see way or by making it come from an otherwise legitimate source[1]. The goal of money laundering is being able to point at a legitimate source and being able to claim that's where the money came from and the complex transactions are meant to make it look plausible or at least hard to disprove. [1] eg: if I pay a utility bill with illegitimate funds and overpay and then they refund me, that refund may be seen as laundered, because the utility company is legitimate, which is why they tend to have restrictions around such things -- I came across this example when I was doing anti-money laundering training when I did contract work for a bank recently, although admittedly I might not be remembering all the details correctly.
- holtalanm 6y agoEver been to Costco? They sell $50 gift cards for a bunch of different stores, and you only pay like $45 at the register. I know, $5 isn't much, but it is still lower than face value.
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoThat explains why people would pay less for a gift card but not more??
- holtalanm 6y agoThe parent of my post was asking how it was possible to have a gift card sell for less than face value....
- silverpepsi 6y agoOne black friday season I went in Office Max or Depot and bought 20 $100 gift cards for Amazon because there was a very slight discount. This enabled me to purchase a laptop and save $100 approx Remember Amazon has the credit card fee margin of savings if someone uses a gift card instead of a credit card.
- mlyle 6y agoThat's not really savings, though, because they need to sell it to Office Max for a price where A) Office Max can pay credit card fees, and B) make a small profit.
- silverpepsi 6y agoWell that was kind of exactly my point. It is in their interest to do gift cards because they don't lose anything or incur a cost on themselves, once someone is locked into a gift card they only gain sales. This is made possible at least in part because they have savings on the credit card cut
- mlyle 6y agoI think you're not understanding me. They have to sell it to retailers for less than they'd get after credit card acceptance. E.g. Apple sells gift cards for $88/$100 to a retailer, who then uses the remaining $12 on transaction costs (including paying their credit card fees) and profit margin. Vs. Apple likely loses ~2% on credit card acceptance-- and gets to keep $98/$100. It's still worth it, because they capture money from last-minute gifts, etc...
- silverpepsi 6y agoHmmm yeah. Though $88/100 is super unrealistic with margins on electronics of 1-2% Amazon would be taking a loss of what the profit from 10 laptop sales every time they dealt with someone buying a laptop all in gift cards. Or maybe gift cards are so rarely used in this way they write it off with higher margin uses
- Theodores 6y agoI have a gift card in my wallet that you can have for a fraction of what it is for. I need nothing from the store issuing the gift card but I would like booze from the shop around the corner or cash for some contraband substances. The store issuing the gift card is out of the town center and I have had it for ages. Make me an offer and, if I get enough booze or contraband for now/tonight then I am happy.
- xur17 6y agoA lot of time the merchants sell them at a discount since they are normally gifted, so it brings in new business, some are lost, etc. There are entire communities online that take advantage of these discounts + credit card points, and resell the cards to others.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> and how could gift cards ever be cheaper than face value (surely someone somewhere would be working at a loss)? Gift cards are always cheaper than face value. The basic economics tells you they can't be more expensive than that, since they are similar to money, but worse. They can easily be cheaper; $300 at Starbucks is not as good as $200 wherever you want. Your incredulity is pretty shocking; if you want to see gift cards sold cheaper than face value, all you need to do is walk into a Costco.
- goblin89 6y agoI use gift cards regularly to unlock country-specific content stores (such as Steam and others) other than where my bank or physical location is. Not once have I seen a gift card supplier that sells them cheaper than face value. Where does your experience come from? It seems appallingly out of touch.
- mlyle 6y agoAt Costco and other stores, you can often purchase gift cards for a bit below face value. When Apple, Amazon, etc, seek to have retailers carry their gift cards, the retailer needs to have an incentive. So the gift cards are usually sold for below face value to the retailer. In turn, some retailers will sell gift cards for below their face value. So, e.g., at this moment, Nintendo eShop $50 cards are $44.99; XBox/Sony Playstation $100 gift cards are $89.99; a $500 gift card on Alaska Airlines is $449.99; $100 at Hulu is $89.99. These are not particularly good prices. Oftentimes Apple $100 gift cards will be $79.99. The other incentives at Costco still hold, too; you can get the Executive Membership 2% back and the 2% credit card cash back.
- goblin89 6y agoIf I wanted to use a US content store and in fact lived in the US (which sounds like a prerequisite for being able to enjoy those Costco discounts), presumably I would not need to purchase gift cards in the first place. Where gift cards are available, they are never cheaper than face value due to basic market dynamics. In retail stores in non-Western countries I have never seen a gift card with e.g. 100 unit value sold for less than 100 units either, although I haven’t specifically looked for such.
- parliament32 6y agoSay you got a gift card as a gift (ya know, like the name implies) for some store you know you'll never shop at. Wouldn't you be okay with selling it for 90% of the value online, rather than let it sit and collect dust?
- gruez 6y ago>My only logic is that its a form of money laundering. That doesn't really make sense. Why buy it online leaving a papertrail (ebay account, bank/credit card transactions), when you can buy it anonymously in person using cash? The daily volume also isn't there. It's a couple thousand dollars per day at most. You can easily get that amount in person without raising any suspicion by driving to different stores in your city.
- jklein11 6y agoMoney laundering typically implies taking illegitimate sources of income and making them seem legitimate. In this case you could sell yourself $100 gift cards for $120. You wouldn’t even necessarily have to send yourself a gift card. You now have a legit source of income aka your eBay sellers account for illegal income.
- gruez 6y agoAnd the IRS is totally cool with you selling thousands of dollars of gift cards each week with no corresponding invoices on how you obtained them? Money laundering business tend to be cash based with high margins (eg. car wash), so you only need to buy $10 worth of supplies to launder $1000 worth of cash.
- mywittyname 6y agoThere's probably enough money on the books to acquire the "inventory". Especially if the "company" never pays out the profits. I.e, a $10,000 outside "investment" allows you to sell 100, $100 gift cards for $120. Those profits get reinvested on the books, and now you have $12,000 to sell 120, $100 gift cards. Lather, rinse, repeat.
- gruez 6y agoThat's still sort of pointless because you need to generate a ton of turnover, which increase costs (credit card processing fees) and generally raises suspicion. With a carwash you might only need 1000 fake car washes at $60 each ($60,000 turnover) each to launder $50,000, but with the amazon gift card scheme you'll need to do $250,000 in turnover which is suspiciously high for a small business selling gift cards.
- koboll 6y agoMore likely churning credit card points.
- grecy 6y agoWhat if it's just a big game between friends for Credit Card Points? We just keep going back and forward between you and I, always getting the $1k Credit Card sign up bonuses and a TON of points each month.
- Sophistifunk 6y agoI've spent a few thousand on itunes gift cards over a decade or so, all at above face value, because it's the only way to get funds into my "US" account, which is the only way to get access to a lot of content without torrenting it. These days though, I just torrent more often than not. It's just too much work trying to pay for the content I like.