Site sells, swaps unwanted cards
Posted on Thursday, December 6, 2007
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Style/209807/
If you get a gift card in your stocking you don’t want or can’t use, you’re not stuck with it.
Fresno, Calif.-based Plastic Jungle has a Web site, www. plasticjungle. com, where you can buy, sell or exchange gift cards, usually at something less than face value.
You can sell it on the site for cash, and get a little bit less, or trade it for a card you want.
“All Plastic Jungle does is, it’s a marketplace for gift cards,” says spokesman Marc Gendron. “It’s a free market — well, less the 10 percent transaction charge. A $ 100 Home Depot card may sell for $ 95.”
The site will buy the card directly and resell it if you don’t want to wait for somebody on the site to take it off your hands.
“Plastic Jungle doesn’t just buy any card, though,” Gendron says, noting that some regional cards probably won’t trade well. It costs nothing to list a card on the site; the seller pays a 10 percent transaction fee at the point of purchase.
And you can buy cards for Christmas at a discount.
The company guarantees all of its transactions.
“Plastic Jungle assures that every gift card listed on its site is accurate and valid, or [the customers ] receive their money back,” according to a news release. “Any person who receives a card that is invalid or less than the amount indicated will be reimbursed by Plastic Jungle.”
If your cards are lost, stolen, burned up in a California wildfire or blown away by an Arkansas tornado, “Plastic Jungle can help get those replaced,” Gendron says.
Soon, Gendron says, Plastic Jungle will make it possible for consumers to “mobilize” their gift cards and check balances online or even through a cell phone.