Do you notice how some stores seem to have 50%-off sales a lot of the time? Does this make you think that the regular prices are about 100% too high?
Walmart and Amazon.com aren't like this at all. These two retailers are perhaps best known for their low prices. To offer low prices every day, they have lots of efficiencies built into their business models, and very small profit margins.
Some discount tricks don't work as consistently
Many stores offer coupons to bring in shoppers. But aside from those, there are still a few ways to shave a few percent off here and there on many purchases:
- Rewards credit cards. An appropriate rewards credit cards can knock off one to three percent from nearly every purchase (which is a great deal if you don't carry a balance on that card, and a horrible deal if you do!) (
View Additional Cash Back Credit Card Offers Here)
- Discounted gift cards. With a bit of planning it's usually possible to do even better than the best rewards cards with discounted gift cards. Places like Raise.com and Cardpool.com broker unused gift cards and sell them to buyers for less than their face value.
- Rebate sites. Sign up for free, click through to a store to buy something, get a rebate. It's that easy. And there are a bunch of them. (Compare rebates at your favorite stores here.)
How do Amazon.com and Walmart fare for discounted gift cards?
The discount on gift cards from some stores is pretty good. Some Pier 1 Imports cards are currently 25% off face value at Raise.com.
But what about Walmart gift cards? Cardpool.com is offering them now for … 4,5%. A much lower discount. At least there's a good supply of them.
As for Amazon.com cards, they're even harder to come by. GiftCardZen.com has only three cards now. They're each in the neighborhood of $500 apiece, and the discount is a whopping … 1.5%. Razor thin discount. But if you have the Amazon.com Rewards Card as we do, that nets a 3% rebate. Granted, it's in the form of Amazon.com gift cards, but we spend enough there that it won't go to waste.
How about rebate sites?
Well, for Walmart.com, as of now, TopCashBack.com and BeFrugal.com are each offering up to 4% off. (Purchases from some departments give less than a 4% rebate.) When prices are already as low as they are, there just isn't much left to distribute.
The same websites offer 8.5% back on Amazon.com purchases — in certain departments. Again, just not much to distribute around to affiliates, and hence to rebate sites.
When margins are thin, getting discounts is tough. But this usually means that the price is pretty good to begin with.
I’m wary of deeply discounted sales of gift cards. Unless they are coming from the retailer themselves, it’s likely that most of the cards being sold were purchased with stolen credit card numbers, and buying these gift cards help make credit card theft profitable.
Example: on Raise, there are a ton of gift cards for Target that have a value of $2000. Who the heck EVER gets a gift card for that much? Further, who gets a Target gift card for that much and still has no use for it, and willing to accept less than face value (note that in addition to the discount, these sites take a commission)
I suspect these companies know the nature of the sellers, but maintain an official ignorance.
That said there are legitimate discounted gift cards out there. I’ve purchased iTunes gift cards for sale at less than face value. But that was a limited time sale at Staples, completely kosher, and limited to only so many per customer.
Interesting points. I guess that this is a risk buying anything secondhand, though. Just about anything can have a checkered past.
You are correct about there being several $2,000 Target gift cards for sale. I also did a Google search for $2,000 Target gift card. There have been some legitimate contests with $2,000 gift cards as prizes.