What’s Going On With eBay Gift Cards Sold By Third Parties?

Recently a number of third parties that sell eBay gift cards have either removed them entirely (Target & Staples) or limited the amount you can purchase (Gyft). I don’t think it’s a coincidence that sites that were selling these gift cards that also earned 5%/5x (or had way to buy endless quantities with themselves e.g Target) are the ones that have been shut down.

What I think is that eBay tracks what gift cards are sold where and what those gift cards are used on. The majority of eBay gift cards purchased from those retailers would have been from people purchasing other gift cards for resale on eBay, something that is unlikely to be profitable for them (keep in mind they are usually already discounted and then eBay is giving the retailer that sells their gift cards a cut, paying a portal bonus and also giving out eBay bucks). So they have simply decided to either reduce the discount those retailers get on purchasing eBay gift cards in bulk or prohibited them from selling eBay gift cards all together.

This makes sense to me, as Staples are still selling physical gift cards (both in store & online) and Gyft are still selling lower denomination gift cards (presumably more likely to be given as a gift and left unredeemed or redeemed on items with a larger profit margin and possibly without a portal payout/eBay bucks).

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Brandon
Brandon (@guest_267531)
June 14, 2016 04:34

I ordered $300 in eGift cards from Staples on 6/9 and the order got cancelled. The next day, they pulled them all. Shame.

CJ
CJ (@guest_267514)
June 14, 2016 02:51

I don’t feel like this is due to fraud. I feel like ebay is going to take over the gift cards that are sold fully and cut paypal out. Right now you still need a paypal account to use them and they all mention paypal on them. I feel like they are going to let them drain out and put out new ones. That seems like the next logical step in the progression to me.

Another thing you guys need to consider is the mandated chip reader date has passed for quite a few merchants. It is a lot easier to pull all of your cards than it is to tell attendants to make sure that people can only use chip to buy. I have noticed that something odd is happening with my local Kroger gift card rack. It has moved twice in a month from one side of the store to the other, then back again, but the self checkout registers have also moved.

Who knows though, it could be fraud, but something is definitely up.

CJ
CJ (@guest_268200)
June 16, 2016 14:44

I disagree to an extent. When you get an e-card, it says the same terms and conditions on the back of it as the regular gift card. Large corporations have to go through a pretty long dragged out process to make changes. The provider of the cards because they are an external company would have to give them examples, Lawyers would have to read the fine print, given there would be a change to an existing system one side may want to negotiate new rates, CEO’s at minimum would be involved in per-screening what it looked like and anything involving it really and they would have to approve it, but really there are probably a significantly higher amount of people involved in the decision than just the CEO with something like this because you are talking millions of dollars with something like this. If any of those things failed along the way, then they would have to re-do it. I can guarantee that getting the head people for both sides together would be rather difficult to begin with considering the amount of stuff they already have to do in a day.

Stuff that would take you and me a couple days at most to hammer out can take months in the corporate world. I can pretty much guarantee that something like this is nowhere near the top of the CEO of ebay’s priority list either. My point being that there is a chain you have to go through when you make changes to a large corporation, contracts, lawyers, meetings, announcements to share holders and important people need to be made and I am going to bet that there are more parties than that involved.

CJ
CJ (@guest_268204)
June 16, 2016 14:56

The other thing I forgot to bring attention to is that those terms are the same whether it be electronic or physical. They wont just work on e-cards then do physical as a different deal. All of it will be hammered out at the same time. The fact we see new shipments of cards comeing into stores is because they have these things printed by the pallet. there are probably pallets upon pallets sitting in a warehouse somewhere as where e-gift cards are nor pre-made or pre-determined, it follows an algorithm for the card numbers and that gets spit into a template. So lets say they turn that thing off, then it is shut off. The notice to turn it off isn’t going to happen all at once, it will be on a as soon as people get notice basis because again, important people are busy. If i were to put money on this, I would bet we are seeing stage 1. Stage 2 will be new cards coming out. Now whether groceries stores or what not run out of cards before it happens will depend on how fast decisions get made. I remember 2 years ago there was a big shortage for a few months. You couldn’t find cards anywhere, then all of a sudden variable cards hit the shelves and the ebay gift cards had a new design. We are probably looking at the same thing here. The fact staples took it down only makes me think it is happening more now.

CJ
CJ (@guest_268210)
June 16, 2016 15:05
  CJ

Well maybe more than 2 years ago, but you get the picture. I have been doing the ebay American express at grocery store trick for nearly 10 years now hahaha, so it all kind of blends together at a point. I can say that the kroger fuel thing that some of the bloggers started talking about recently… Yea 10 years ago… hahaha. Chase Ink is cool and all, but the legacy card and fuel points makes that look like a waste. Getting fuel way back then for like 0.10-0.20$ per gallon with 1.00$ off was really nice.

Aahz
Aahz (@guest_267415)
June 13, 2016 17:16

Are all of these issues with eGift Cards or with physical gift cards as well?

Dan
Dan (@guest_267382)
June 13, 2016 14:38

Seems like most of the discussions about their eBay GC’s getting drained involve purchasing the cards from Target. Any reports of fraud from other sites? I have about $2K of eBay gift cards sitting around. Makes me want to make a small purchase on each card so that it’s tied to my eBay user name and can’t be drained from a fraudulent party.

Mark O
Mark O (@guest_267419)
June 13, 2016 17:50

I did that today with mine just in case.

Fiby
Fiby (@guest_267375)
June 13, 2016 13:54

Commenting to sub (there’s no subscribe without commenting option at the moment)

James
James (@guest_267381)
June 13, 2016 14:31

Same

Eric
Eric (@guest_267429)
June 13, 2016 18:55

Thanks for your comment. I assumed that commenting had been disabled completely when I looked at a couple of newer posts. Had you been receiving comments on newer posts before this happened? I replied to Will in some other thread about the issue but neither he nor anyone else replied to me.

Eric
Eric (@guest_267431)
June 13, 2016 18:56

I wasn’t given the option to subscribe when I wrote that comment. Were you?

S
S (@guest_267369)
June 13, 2016 13:26

I’m suspecting fraud is going be the main reason. Come to think about it, I’ll contact ebay again because while they said they’d look into it… I never got a response to what happened with my card.

HG
HG (@guest_267352)
June 13, 2016 12:06

Is there any way to inquire as to which GC was used on a transaction that was returned? I had 5 partial refunds go back to 5 eBay GCs. Sure, I keep the GCs in my desk for months but I really don’t want to go thru these manually.

If eBay was half competent they would pull a Best Buy.

J P
J P (@guest_267346)
June 13, 2016 11:55

Little off topic but anyone know why resellers or gift card exchanges are not selling/stocking staples gift card lately?

Dcatast
Dcatast (@guest_267371)
June 13, 2016 13:29

How much staples do you need? Dm me on twitter

sheila
sheila (@guest_267345)
June 13, 2016 11:49

Wow! I guess I should stay away from GC reselling for a while.

Ben
Ben (@guest_267341)
June 13, 2016 11:35

Some weak GC offerings today…5% off gas cards – pass.

AE
AE (@guest_267362)
June 13, 2016 13:01

“Some weak GC offerings today…5% off gas cards – pass.”

So much this – 10% or 8% please with ebay bucks… lousy offerings so far – must be saving up for the father’s day sale?