Gift Cards Are Worth Less Than You Think [data viz]

A gift card's value on the open market is not necessarily the same as its value as a <i>gift</i>.<p>We respond differently to cash than to gift cards. If I receive cash, I tend to treat it the same as all other money I receive. Mentally, it goes into my "income" pile and I'm just as conservative with it as I am with all of my other income.<p>On the other hand, if someone gave me, say, a Best Buy gift card, I <i>have</i> to spend it at Best Buy. The giver is saying "I want you to have a fun electronic something, but I want you to pick which one." I'm going to use it to splurge on something I <i>want</i> as opposed to something I <i>need</i>. (With that in mind, I find grocery store gift cards odd.)<p>It also wasn't obvious to me until the end that this was put together by people who have a product that compete with gift cards.

Is this where I bitch about those "cash" gift Visa and Mastercards? (The ones that are essentially a prepaid credit card with a fixed balance.) I've received a couple of them and they're so bizarre to me. First of all, they apparently cost $3.95, which is a 15.8% fee on a $25 card. (You would think Visa and Mastercard would be so happy to have more cards out there causing 3% transaction fees to happen that they'd give the cards away at face value).<p>Then they're actually less practical than cash. You have to spend <i>exactly</i> the card balance to use them effectively. So if I swipe it at Starbucks a few times until it's down to $1.49, the next transaction will simply be declined! I'd have to ask the barista ahead of time to split the transaction and charge exactly $1.49 to the card (so I have to mentally track the balance or call Visa/MC every time I use it). I'm guessing it's more likely that people reach the point where the card is declined and then throw it away, with Visa/MC pocketing the remains.<p>If you want to use it online, you have to go to the Visa/MC web site and register it (provide your personal details) so that the card is associated with billing details. Lovely side effect: they get your personal contact information to spam you with.<p>For the love of all that is rational, please don't give me these cards, I'd much rather have $28.95 cash than $25 + extra hassles. The best use of these cards I could come up with is converting them to a gift card at a particular store you actually like. Store gift cards have correct overflow semantics - the full balance of the card will be used and the register will ask you to come up with the difference.

The value I place on a gift card bought online has to be adjusted for trust and convenience.<p>If I'm buying an Amazon gift card online from Amazon, I will happily pay $100 to get a $100 gift card. If I'm buying an Amazon gift card from someone on ebay, of course I'm not going to pay $100 for it. Why would I when buying the same card from Amazon would be far more convenient and Amazon has proven itself far more trustworthy to me than any random ebayer?<p>However, this reduction in value due to a decrease in trust &#38; convenience says nothing about the actual value of that gift card to me or the receiver. I'm simply trading some increased risk of being ripped off for some of the cash value of the card.

Their data gathering and thesis are flawed. Online selling price has little to do with value. If people were selling cash online they would not get 100% of the value.<p>Gift cards sold online could have been bought with stolen credit cards (seriously, watch out!). The person selling the cards will take well below the value because they didn't pay anything. The person buying the card is assuming a huge risk, the card may be with nothing.<p>The true value of a gift card lies in the eyes of the receiver. And like any gift you have to know the person you are giving it to. A $400 gift card for Agent Provocateur is worth a lot to a girl who loves lingerie and appreciates $200 bras, but it's not worth much to someone who only likes functional cotton underwear. I like computers, but a $400 gift card to the Apple Store would be useless to me because I don't want to spend the extra $800 it would take to get a computer. Even a $10 Starbucks card is worth nothing to someone who only drinks Diet Coke, but worth a full $10 to someone who drinks Starbucks every day.

I was intrigued -- until I tried to send one - and paypal auth page showed a higher amount than my gift card amount -- FAQ says $1 + 5%. Get real.<p>They're absolutely right: CASH gets you more!

Who is going to be giving used gift cards this year?<p>But more seriously, someone needs to make a firefox plug-in or app that automatically searches for discounted gift cards when I happen to be browsing Amazon, etc..<p>And there needs to be a search engine for these gift cards, because I want to buy the 40% off Harbor Freight variety.

What about Amazon? Seems to approach cash value. Can somebody explain what's happening here: <a href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/Amazon-Gift-Card-50-Fifty-FREE-SHIPPING-No-expiration-amazon-com-/290641980801?pt=US_Gift_Certificates&#38;hash=item43ab9cad81" rel="nofollow">http://www.ebay.com/itm/Amazon-Gift-Card-50-Fifty-FREE-SHIPP...</a>

I thought the uptake was going to be that the whole concept of a gift card is ludicrous. Instead I'm sold on using a <i>different</i> kind of gift card.<p>Don't get me wrong -- I often prefer getting gift cards to getting something useless, but they just seem like a cover for not knowing me very well. I suppose they make sense when there's likely to be an asymmetry in charity. But if you're going to give cash, why give at all? What use is it to exchange $50 bills?

While I love the interactive infographic my favorite part of this is referring to Frederick's of Hollywood as a place "no one has heard of". My girlfriend sends me at least 4-5 links to items on that website every few weeks. Where can I get one of those gift cards for 50% off?!

Big box stores give gift cards in return for falsely returned items (get a receipt, walk out with the same thing twice; this is why the guy at the door wants to mark your receipt with a market.)<p>So of COURSE people are willing to take a lower price for their $100 gift cards - they paid less than $100.<p>My theory is that the gift card economy is a shadow economy for people who need to use plastic for whatever reason but are unable to open accounts (lack of documentation I guess?)

So, who wants to sell me a $100 Whole Foods gift card for $91?

I really like the scatter plots. Are you using a plotting library to do it, or do you have your own code?

I've found that prepaid credit cards work well as gift cards without the restrictions.

So am I to understand that GiftRocket's whole business model is predicated on the belief that giving cash is rude?