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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

Never have anything to do with gift cards, ever. If you get one as a gift give it back to the giver.

I had a relative ask me to buy them an Amazon voucher as a birthday gift, because they lived on the other side of the world, didn’t want to eat the SWIFT charges, and didn’t know how to offramp cryptocurrency.

For some reason every card I put in wasn’t accepted, and then my 10 year old Amazon account was banned. I was even using a Fire TV at the time with the same account. Had to create a new account. Very annoying.

They're essentially a scheme to collect cash in advance and reap unspent cards, right? I don't know why anyone ever thought they made more sense than cash.

Because people are generally weak minded and have been brainwashed into thinking that it’s tacky to give cash.

because you can gift them to others and ensure that they use it.

same for amazon gift cards

The "ensure they use it" is the part that is uncertain, and thus the 'scam' aspect. Amazon (and other vendors) are betting that a significant percentage of end users will not actually use it, and the seller will get to keep the entire balance as profit.

According to some not-very-thorough queries, somewhere from 10–19% of gift cards are never redeemed in the USA, which equates to tens of billions of dollars. Unreal. If even half of that is true, that's a tremendous amount of charity to corporations.

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