eBay Gift Vouchers
I stumbled in to the strange world of the eBay Gift Vouchers category, I had looked at Lastminute Auction a site who’s strapline is ‘an hour or less, a buck or less’ or in the UK parlance ‘a quid or less…’ I had noticed an auction for ‘Telegraph Vouchers’ the Telegraph is a broadsheet newspaper, and the vouchers gave you a discount off the face value. This caught my attention as I have a stack of these vouchers after being accosted by a promotion girl on my way in to work at Waterloo Station, these (usually pretty…) girls have a hard time dealing with commuters in ‘London Mode’ - no eye contact, quick pace, and would probably walk through a person rather than take a voucher.
Anyway, I was interested in seeing how much these ‘free’ vouchers were selling for - and was surprised that they were selling for up to £31.59 (for a discount of £118.80 off the standard price). I then looked at the category as a whole (Other Gift Vouchers) and looked at other voucher and was astonished by the price of Argos vouchers, often only a tiny percentage below face value. The discount off of higher face value vouchers was potentially useful (£370 for a £500 voucher, a 26% discount) however with smaller denominations they were tiny (~£19 for a £20 voucher, a 5% discount). I don’t know about you but my time is worth more than £1.00…mind you that said I have probably spent an hour investigating this phenomenon and writing this entry, without a penny of compensation - looks like I’m the idiot!
My favourite was one person who paid £10.60 for a £10.00 voucher!! - maybe it was a particularly collectable voucher, a first edition perhaps…