Idea #1: The ShopAmerica Gift Card — How Washington Can Stretch Your Government Checks
March 13th, 2012 by Al Lewis (alewis)
Instead of just getting a social security/tax refund/government pension check direct-deposited, you may choose to exchange your payment at a contracted website, where participating qualified sellers offer gift cards up to 25% more than the check, swapped for the whole check. Example: If you want a new fridge, and you have a $1000 tax refund due, you can go online and have that tax refund electronically swapped for a $1100+ gift card to a store or manufacturer selling refrigerators.
The benefit to consumers is obvious: anyone planning to spend money at the same place over time (like supermarkets) or on a large single purchase gets a much better deal.
For the government, this is a way to stimulate the economy without increasing the deficit. The government will actually make money from Day One on this by selling the rights to develop the site to the highest bidder — Amazon, EBay, FB, Groupon etc. They will want to be selected to develop the site because they can attract advertising easily since people would already be going on this site to shop..
Some sellers would definitely see the following advantages to doing this:
- ·They get a large prepayment, which is earmarked to be spent with them. (And of course, some people will forget to spend the whole card. They’ll factor that into their premium.)
- ·There is no expense to them in marketing the gift card, just posting it to the site. (Currently, when you see gift cards for sale in CVS, for example, you can be sure that the sponsor is only receiving about 80% of the face value. Remember, there is expense to marketing anything through stores, not to mention that people purchase them with credit cards sometimes, which itself creates an added expense.)
For instance, up here in Boston Legal Sea Foods offered a free lobster dinner (about a $40 value) to anyone who bought a $200 gift card in the restaurant. So Legal is willing to “pay” $40 to place a $200 gift card directly with a consumer instead of having to sell it through an intermediary, who would otherwise have marked it up by that $40, and only given Legal about $160 for each $200 card sold.. Also, when the government sent around those “stimulus checks” in 2008, several retailers offered to exchange them for gift cards at a substantial premium even with all the paperwork involved in doing that at their stores, by hand.
Bottom line: Clearly many sellers would do this.
If you like this idea and want to get a better deal on your next tax refund, social security check, pension etc. , just pass this link around to as many people as possible, and tell them about the idea and get them to “like” the site and pass the ideas along.
Oh, yeah, and if you work in the private sector, like most of us, you won’t miss out: Once this site “goes live” many employers will start offering the option of having one of your paychecks swapped into the site as well. The ShopAmerica gift card site will become the preferred, central low-cost high-value market for high-denomination gift cards.
March 16th, 2012 at 1:50 am
This is an EXCELLENT IDEA! Is there an expiration dateon these high denomination gift cards? Excellent pointabout customers not using their full balance ontheir gift cards-happens alot where I work in a retail store-or,they use it two years later-I don’t think in Massachusetts,gift cards expire,or maybe the do.. EXCELLENT POSTING AS ALWAYS-LOVE THIS IDEA SO VERY MUCH! Welcome Back-and Thankyou for being here.