Comments on: Amazon.com Gift Certificate

By: lr

lr — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 01:16:50 +0000

I’m not quite sure how you can say that gift certificates are a scam. First, if someone is having to mail it to me, I’d much rather have a gift certificate than cash. They’re tracable for any reputable company. No intelligent person would mail cash. Second, a gift certificate is much more personal, it shows that there was some thought put into the gift. They are, essentially, the same as cash.

I don’t like that Amazon doesn’t have gift cards. I also don’t like that I can’t get them rush shipped.

By: Rick

Rick — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 17:54:55 +0000

I had shifted to buying books at Buy.com sometime ago – they guarantee 10% discount to Amazon.com price!

By: foo

foo — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 16:21:13 +0000

Gift certificates are a scam.

I marvel at the success of these things. Guaranteed money to a retailer before they have provided any product or service. If you want to show some love, give cash (or send a cash transfer) with a nice note saying you hope they will treat themeselves to a book (or whatever).

Show some love – give actual cash. Would you rather get $10 or a $10 gift card to Starbucks? Would your giftees think any differently?

By: cm

cm — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:43:19 +0000

And wasn’t Amazon named as one company deducting fees from their store cards? Not sure it applies to gift certificates.

By: cm

cm — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:42:14 +0000

jkw: Yup, there are those paying at the checkout with crisp $100 bills. That doesn’t have to mean the money is not legit, but sometimes I wonder.

By: jkw

jkw — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 14:44:05 +0000

Anything bought with cash can’t be tracked. Purchases with checks can be tracked, but I don’t think anybody is willing to go through the effort. The credit card companies know the answer to who spent money. I suspect that they sell the aggregate data somewhere. They can tell you how stores are doing at least as quickly as the stores themselves can. With all their fraud protection algorithms, they notice any unusual spending right away. It would not be hard to use similar algorithms to determine how individual retailers are doing. However, they only know how much each person spent at each store. They don’t know what was bought or how profitable the purchases were.

By: jjr

jjr — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 14:00:56 +0000

Barry, it would be interesting to know whether there is any data that provides insight into how much of the retail numbers reported for Friday were the result of foreign purchases of final goods in the USA which will be exported outside the USA for use. In other words, with the dollar significantly weakened last week, foreigners had particularly strong buying power. Did they account for a significant amount of retail buying? How would one measure that? In NYC, the percentage of foreign retail business might be different from in Peoria. I am not sure this is even a measurable number, nor that it’s significant enough to measure. With a VAT, we perhaps would have access to some data based on applications for refunds as foreigners exited the country. Not to be taken as an opinion on value-added tax, rather just stream-of-consciousness.

I’m struggling to determine how dollar weakness can possibly be a positive development for US equities, especially if they’re no longer rising in price. The dollar is becoming a very interesting story here, especially after the nasty few days it experienced to close out last week.

By: Leisa

Leisa — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 13:39:57 +0000

I’ve had wonderful success in giving Amazon e-mail gift certificates. Nothing could be easier, but I have to admit, I’ve not done anything en masse as Kris points out. It is easy to give and easy to redeem. I’ve also done it with E-bay and cooking.com.

I buy LOTS of books, and I Amazon get’s most of my book money (unless I’m foraging in the bargain bin at Barnes and Noble). Amzaon’s online prices are always lower than B&N’s.

By: Barry Ritholtz

Barry Ritholtz — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 13:38:48 +0000

That was part of my question: Can this substitute for the gift cards, which can be put into nice little envelopes, with Happy Holoday cards.

My younger brother gives out Starbux cards by the 100s — mostly to his clients’ staff. Hard to imagine doing the same with a n on line gift certificate.

I would use these to give gifts to people who are very difficult to shop for . . .

By: Kris Tuttle

Kris Tuttle — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 13:06:01 +0000

We tried using Amazon to give employees gift certificates en masse one year and it was a disaster. Sometimes the emails would get lost and Amazon had no way to track down or resolve any of our issues. This was a few years ago and maybe their system is better but they were so unhelpful in working with us that we never considered doing it again.