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January 17, 2007
Giving money away to Home Depot with gift cards
Home Depot made about $40 million last year from consumers giving their money away to them. A bunch of people just walked into the store, handed over cash or credit, and walked out with a small piece of plastic that ended up in a desk, at the bottom of a closet, or wherever it is that lost socks go.
Consumers ended up not spending $8 billion - that's $8,000,000,000 - in gift cards, or about 10% of the total gift cards given out last year. Home Depot isn't the only company making tens of millions of bucks from people not cashing in gift cards. According to TowerGroup, Best Buy made $40 million from people not buying electronics and The Limited made $30 million from people not buying clothes.
So what to do when you get a gift card you don't want or can't use? Well, you could re-gift it - for example, I donated a Sports Authority gift card to an elementary school so the kids could have some new soccer balls. But if you're not as good as a person as me, you could go on eBay or craigslist and sell it.
A few websites have popped up dedicated to letting you trade in those gift cards for others or buy or sell gift cards for less than 100% of their face value. Swapagift.com charges $3.99 for each card you sell on their website. I used to sell gift cards (that I "earned" from pay-to-surf programs) on eBay and usually got about 70%-80% of the value of the card.
Posted by brian at January 17, 2007 12:48 AM