General Business: Gift Card Business

How often do you get a gift card from an employer, family member, friend, etc. for a store that you would rarely ever buy something from? Since stores rarely (I've never seen it) will let you return a gift card for cash, your stuck with essentially a worthless gift.

I am working on a business idea that would allow people to sell their unwanted gift cards. Maybe at a rate of 80%-90% of the actual value of the card. It could be tier based, for instance:

-Cards worth less than $50 will be bought for 80% of their actual value.
-Cards worth $50-$100 will be bought for 85% of their actual value.
-Cards worth over $100 will be bought at 90% of their actual value.

Now I am at the part where that I am still debating on what do I do with the cards after I buy them? Do I start a giftcard website also that sells gift cards at a discounted price? Do I work with companies and sell the cards back to them at a discounted price? Do I turn it into an eBay like website where people can bid on the gift cards?

I'm looking for any input you may have.
Do you think this could be successful?
Any ideas on how to turnover the cards for $$$?
Any other input you have that you think would be beneficial, please post.

Thanks in advance
Ryan

The biggest problem with eBay style would be it would be easy for members to say they have a gift card worth x amount and it really has nothing on it. You can't force them to post the code so it could be verified b/c so many companies allow gift cards online with just the number. So essentially someone could just use the number that was posted just for verification purposes to buy something at the online website.

Isn't there a site that doesn't something like this?

www.giftcardbuyback.com
www.certificateswap.com

What would you be doing different?

The one thing that I heard was that sometimes you get scammed because people have used some of the money on the card or it's expired, etc. etc. - like anything online there's some risk involved.

[quote="Eric"]The one thing that I heard was that sometimes you get scammed because people have used some of the money on the card or it's expired, etc. etc. - like anything online there's some risk involved.[/quote]

[quote="Karen"]hmmm interesting concept. One that would be fairly open to a wide assortment of scams, I would think.

Karen[/quote]

That was one of the main obstacles that I was facing when trying to figure out how this business would work. Obviously the giftcard websites that Eric mentioned above address this issue by sending money out only after they have received the cards. That is another reason this would not function well as an eBay type business, in my opinion.

[quote="DariusEG"]Maybe you should introduce yourself to greeneye (jessica) she seems to be in the gift card business[/quote]

I'm in the GREETING card business! :wink: but thanks for the plug!