Cardpool (YC W10) Featured on NBC - Sell Unwanted Gift Cards for Cash | Hacker News Reader

Cardpool (YC W10) Featured on NBC - Sell Unwanted Gift Cards for Cash

nbcmiami.com

55 pointsanson33 comments

Like most high-schoolers, Benoit gets gift cards for birthdays and holidays and puts most of them to use. But, if it's a bookstore, it'll just waste away in her wallet.

This makes me cry.

Especially when one considers the variety of items most bookstores have. Barnes and Nobel has a music section, calendars, magazines, trinkets, comic books and a cafe. I think all big bookstores are the same. It isn't like one would actually have to read to shop there.

The real issue here is the way high school English approaches reading, it turns even great novels into a chore. With journal entries, reading quizzes over minor details, etc etc you can't actually sit back and enjoy the books.

I hated reading in high school, but since then I have found that when I read classics similar to those people read in high school, I enjoy them much more than I did back then, even if it's hard to find the time to do so.

I think that goes for lots of learning. When it's forced on someone else's schedule it's hard to enjoy, but when you're genuinely interested it's much more fun and productive.

I think to boil it down to the "real issue" is probably oversimplifying it. I agree that high school English does not encourage reading, but how would you propose they do it differently?

Somebody said to me once, "Shakespeare is so good, it even survives being taught at school.

I don't think teenagers are as against bookstores as people would make it seem. While at my local borders/barnes/used book stores I see teenagers around all the time. Some kids will always be interested in reading, and that's great.

are the teenagers just there hanging out and socializing with each other (a common occurrence if there's a cafe inside the bookstore), or are they actually deeply engaged in reading?

The teens in the local chain bookstore appear to be doing homework. It's the new library.

Maybe they know most of these books are available at the library so they don't feel right buying them, even if it's paid for by the card.

> If you accept the offer, just mail in your card and within a few days, cardpool.com will mail you a check.

I wonder how they deal with gift cards bought with stolen credit cards? If the gift card gets cancelled by the retailer after Cardpool verifies it and sends the cheque, they're out the money.

This could be an easy way to liquidate the balance on a card.

Another question is with gift cards that are redeemable online with just the unique id number.

How do they stop me from sending in my gift card, getting the check, then buying something online?

Also people steal items from places like Home Depot and then return the items for gift cards.

I met a guy who that is all he did. He would steal the items and had his girlfriend return them. Eventually he upped his tactics and started representing himself as a representative from a manufacturer and would do a "recall" of all of stock on a particular item (swiffer wet mop cleaning pads) and he got them all and returned them to other stores.

I wonder how he managed to walk to the store...without his balls of steel weighing him down

He lived on Home Depot gift cards?

I forgot one of his main things was to go through the trash when they threw away items (maybe they couldn't rma them or whatever) and he would return the items to a different store.

He traded the home depot cards for things, cash, trade, he pretty much lived off of it not sure what he is doing now that was awhile ago.

I find it annoying that traditional media websites almost never link to external websites.

It's not just traditional media, it's a cornerstone of their retarded blog "replacements" too ... linking to any of your own shit = extra ad impressions while a visitor searches for context and instead gets ... every piece of crap Engadget's ever written containing the word Sony.

I have experimented with this and found that unloading gift cards at a good price is easy via eBay or "contextual ads" or search engine ads. But, there really isn't an opportunity to establish a competitive advantage on the sell side. Competitors will bid up these channels and, importantly, people can figure out how to Google "buy gift cards" once you present this idea to them.

This business is really about finding a way to get people to sell you gift cards way below face value. But however much PR or advertising you do, most people will just Google "sell gift cards." And, again, you will just be doing work for whomever (of the n existing competitors) ranks highest in the SERPs.

So if that is the plan, you are really just trying to build another SERP merchant, but have the added complication of having to deal with fraud when sourcing your product (and I don't think fraudsters need to be super clever to walk away with a lot of their money).

Hopefully they have a better plan.

The trade is especially big on eBay, since Microsoft will give you %8 cashback on all 'buy it now' transactions just for using Bing as your referrer to eBay.

Is this the same company that was featured as a start-up in an episode of ABC's Shark Tank several months ago?

I think that was GiftCardRescue: http://www.giftcardrescue.com/

Ugh, talking popover (or whatever you call that).

This one has no popover, supports Costco cards (which, last I checked CardPool didn't) and offers cash or Amazon cards in return: http://www.plasticjungle.com/pjweb/

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