Questions about selling gift cards on EBay

Factual Questions
1
  1. I’ve noticed that most people who sell gift cards say that they’ll e-mail the code to the purchaser. How do I as the seller get the e-mail address?
  2. I sell a gift card on EBay and the next day the purchaser claims the code I sent them isn’t valid. What do I do?
2

I don’t know the answer to the first question, but can take a guess at the second:

You’re out of luck.

Selling “electronically delivered gift cards” (as opposed to physical cards that are mailed to the winning bidder / buyer) is prohibited by eBay and, given that eBay tends to side with the buyer in most cases anyway, the seller is going to be on the hook for the value of the card.

3

All communications should be through the eBay messaging system. Send a message to seller/buyer.

I purchased electronic codes of various types a few times via eBay, but no gift card codes. All were received via eBay’s messaging system. (And I was happy with all of them.)

4

Alright, suppose I mail the gift card and the guy who receives it claims the code isn’t valid. What do I do then?

5

Keep a record of the codes and check(and write down) the balances before mailing them off. If they are received and a complaint is made, check the balance again, immediately.

6

Provide evidence to the eBay rep and hope eBay resolves the dispute in your favor. This is really true of all items on eBay, though. Sellers are at a disadvantage to buyer scams, and if you sell on eBay you have to factor this in.

7

This doesn’t really solve the problem (although it MIGHT help in resolving a dispute, but even that is doubtful).

  1. OP checks the balance of the card before mailing it to me.
  2. I receive the card and immediately use the balance to buy something.
  3. I complain to the OP that the card’s balance is $0.

There’s nothing that prevents the OP, in theory, from just redeeming the gift card themselves since they’ve written the number down. Or so the buyer can claim, anyway. (Obviously, it prevents them from redeeming the gift card in person, but online is fair game.)

The short answer is what’s already been given:

Sell at your own risk. eBay tends to side with the buyer (hence their Money Back Guarantee for buyers).

8

I would sell the card to a reseller like Card Pool or Card Cash. You won’t get as much, but you won’t risk getting a chargeback from PayPal which is heavily biased towards the buyer. You have to send the actual card to them and if for some reason the balance doesn’t match, you’ll get a chargeback.

To get the most from your sale to a reseller, you can either list it for direct purchase by a buyer (not sure exactly how it works) or watch the available supply of cards from that match yours (both the store and denomination). when the selling supply runs low, the buy price usually goes up by a few percent. Also, the percentage for selling and buying varies by the denomination of the card. The best time to sell is during the holidays since the supply dwindles and demand is high.