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Subscribe to RSSDid you know you can buy secondhand gift cards to enjoy discounts on plane tickets and hotel reservations?
More than $20 billion worth of gift cards are expected to be given this year in the U.S. for Christmas, Hanukkah, and other celebrations. Some people will even give the gift of travel with cards good toward purchases from airlines, online travel agencies, and hotel chains.
Case in point: You could buy a $50 gift card from Travelocity and give it to a traveler you love. But your gift recipient might not have any trips coming up any time soon, and they might be afraid they'll lose or forget about their gift cards before their expiration date. So these travelers who don't want their cards auction them or trade them off on auction sites like eBay, GiftCardGranny, CardAvenue, and similar auction sites.
Exhibit A: Earlier this evening, someone was auctioning off on eBay a $100 Travelocity gift card, with a starting bid of $65. If you snagged it at that price, you'd be saving 35 percent off the face value, and you could apply the card's balance toward the cost of any upcoming purchase.
While that example is great, I've typically found more modest savings of about 5 or 6 percent once bidding takes place.
Finding these gift card deals is easy. Sign up for e-mail alerts from GiftCardGranny.com, a site that consolidates gift card auction sales on eBay and other sites. The site will alert you when a gift card relevant to your preferred airline becomes available. ("New gift card available from American Airlines. Click over for details.")
A search on GiftCardGranny this evening turned up dozen cards from American Airlines for sale. But inventory varies by the day.
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Leave a Comment:
I would never buy a gift card from someone online unless its value was confirmed by a reliable third party. Quite a lot of people try to sell used theme park tickets and gift cards that have no value. My mom was at Sea World recently and the people in front of her had bought tickets from some reliable looking person that said that the tickets were bought and never used due to unforseen circumstances. When the poor couple got to the gate, they were told that the tickets they bought second hand were used and good for nothing. All of the money they paid was gone. Unless you have some way of checking that the card is still good, do not buy it. Even reputable sellers can unknowingly pass on bad cards if they do not check the current value of all cards they are selling.
Like anything sold in an online auction, you need to look at the ratings of the seller and make a judgment. But I've bought these cards and had no trouble.