Amazon to sell $10 gift cards for $5 - Polidicks

[quote]NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Amazon will sell $10 gift cards to its site for half the price on Tuesday, through its daily deals site AmazonLocal. It's a bid to boost customer interest in the nine-month-old AmazonLocal service, which is one of several deal sites that sprang up after Groupon's (GRPN) success. "Some folks, even if they're Amazon customers, don't know about us yet," says AmazonLocal vice president Mike George. "This is going to draw a whole bunch of people to check us out." Though Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) will of course lose money on the deal, the company is betting the hype will be worth it. "It's hard for me to imagine anyone who wouldn't be interested in the deal. Amazon sells everything from Brazilian keratin treatments to snowblowers," George says. Amazon ran a similar deal in January 2011 on LivingSocial, one month after it invested $175 million in the daily deals site. LivingSocial sold nearly 1.4 million of the $10-for-$20 gift cards -- the equivalent of 80 per second -- in the U.S. George won't reveal how many gift cards Amazon is offering on Tuesday, or any stats about how AmazonLocal has performed so far. The service has expanded "quickly," he says, to 90 cities in 26 states and Washington, D.C. AmazonLocal's relationships with Amazon.com, LivingSocial and even the Kindle e-reader make its business model different from other deal sites. AmazonLocal has its own sales team that negotiates deals, but both Amazon.com and LivingSocial supply some of the offers. Amazon's ad-supported Kindles also display messages hawking AmazonLocal deals. Still, the daily deals market is heavily saturated. Hundreds of startups are trying capitalize on the craze, while big tech companies like Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) are pushing their own coupon services. Not all would-be contenders succeed. Last year, Facebook tested "Facebook Deals" in five cities. It pulled the plug on the experiment in August after only four months. That same month, reviews site Yelp (YELP) laid off half of its Deals staff a year after launching the service. Unlike Facebook's offering, though, Yelp Deals is still running. [/quote] [url]http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/15/technology/amazon-local-deal/?source=cnn_bin[/url]

time to buy like 10 i hope there's no limit

inb4 bill gates buys amazon for 50% off [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Meme reply" - Craptasket))[/highlight]

I've never used AmazonLocal because they don't offer anything here unlike Groupon. edit: Just looked at the website, they don't have anything for 24/50 states and only a few cities/areas for each.

This is actually an ace idea, they'll make a fuckton more profit than selling them for $10.

Though it's nice to see amazon have this, you might have better luck depending on where you live were if you goto your grocier's website that you can purchase your groceries online and have them delivered to you. If I lived in one of the places currenlty available like San Jose I would take up this offer.

Aaaaand they have nothing in Tucson. :I

Awesome, time to spend a few hundred and get my money doubled.

Nothing for my area, either. No wonder no one uses it. I live in one of the biggest cities in the world and they don't even list us -.-

Doesn't even have Michigan.

Assuming they're still making profit off of the items sold, it's a pretty good idea.

Hey guys i know you all want to buy me one :v:

are they anywhere in CAnada.?

Spell bankrupt.

Buy 1, then buy 2, then buy 4, then buy 8, then 16... it keeps happening.

Looks like I'm shopping on Amazon.

Direct profit-wise, this idea is terrible. Awful. They're predicting that the improved awareness will make up for their losses later, indirectly.

Well, this sucks. I was going to buy like, 200 worth at least, too bad this exists in like 10 cities.

Doesn't anyone remember the livingsocial thing they did? Everyone tried to get a bunch of free gift cards for signing up, and then they said NOPE 1 per person. It'll happen again.. it's not that big of a deal. Probably a good move on their part.

Can you buy gift cards using gift cards?

[quote]What is AmazonLocal? AmazonLocal is a local deals website where customers can discover deeply discounted products and services not only from local businesses, but also from national chains and online merchants. If you are an Amazon.com customer, you can use your Amazon account to sign in to AmazonLocal where you'll see savings of up to 75% on restaurants, spas, events, and more[/quote] [url]https://local.amazon.com/help[/url] Oh I thought it was ordering produce. Like woot for your local area. when I first thought of amazon local. [url]http://shop.safeway.com/superstore/default.asp?brandid=1&page=corphome&cmpid=kw_ecom_swy_ongo_free[/url]

just for clarification - these gift cards will be for the Amazon main site, right? Which will be sold at a discounted price on their amazon "local" site, right?

Buy tons now, sell for 7$ on ebay later.

We need a facepunch roadtrip, I need to go to a city that has one

Aww shit. Ima buy 500 dollars worth and buy a thousand dollar laptop for half off. Hell yeah...

Couldn't you buy one Then buy two more Then buy four more Then buy eight more Then keep doing that till they go bankrupt the second you spend it?

Here's a way to make your deals site popular, have the deals work more than 50 miles from your offices. I want to take part in this horribly thought out idea.

[QUOTE=Mr. Smartass;35194221]Couldn't you buy onel Then buy two more Then buy four more Then buy eight more Then keep doing that till they go bankrupt the second you spend it?[/QUOTE] Looks like they'll only be available in non-amazon stores, so no. I came in here thinking the same thing.