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What To Do With A Gift Card You No Longer Want

myarn | Feb 19, 2012 | 0 comments

If you search the phrase Gift Cards in Wikipedia they define it as a card that has a restricted monetary value that is issued by either a bank or a retailer that is given as an alternative to purchasing a physical gift.Â To a consumer it means being able to easily give another person a present they are sure will be appreciated.Â Businesses like them because they are a large source of profit.Â Such large amounts of money, in fact, that a study in 2006 found that people in the U.S. and Canada spent a combined total of over $81 billion dollars on them.

Out of all of this a a lot of businesses have been born that make items such as gift card holders that compliment the cards themselves.Â And if you need something a little more substantial there are available a large variety of various gift card packaging solutions like boxes, bags, envelopes and even tins.Â This is all fine however recent surveys on card redemption rates showed that approximately 10% of these cards never get used.Â

This means billions of dollars that are received by companies without them having to ever give a product or service.Â Retailers, however, can generate even more money if these cards were used.Â Studies have shown that customers will generally spend more than the cardâ€™s value on items or services.

Failure to redeem a gift card can come from several factors like expiration dates, hard to understand redemption rules or lost cards.Â There is another issue and that is simply that you really donâ€™t like the store the card has been issued for.Â Well, there are now services that are targeting this niche.Â These are the gift card resellers.

Sites like Plastic Jungle have created a business around the idea of selling unused cards at a discount.Â You may even trade your card for one that you really will use.Â A few sites can also guarantee that you can redeem the gift cards for their full worth.

For a consumer the main plus is that you wonâ€™t get stuck with credit for a retailer that may not have an item that you really want.Â Converting the card into real money allows you to use that money for something you want.Â With many people hold a credit card balance the money can be used to pay some bills.

Some of the real popularity in the reseller sites is for buyers.Â Most of the gift cards sold on these sites are sold at a discount.Â The reduction that is given can vary but you may expect to get 10% off of the cardâ€™s original value. And if you add this with merchandise that is already discounted the savings can be quite a bit.

Many of these reseller sites have yet to turn a profit themselves but popularity seems to be growing.Â It may help to make gift cards even more desirable.Â You now have a way to unlock the worth of the card that you may spend on just about anything.