Wal-Mart Cards Sell on E-Bay
by October 10, 2005 12:00 am 54 views
For months now, we’ve noticed that hundreds of Wal-Mart gift cards have been sold on eBay, the online auction site. We started checking into such things after Tom Coughlin, Wal-Mart’s former vice chairman, was forced to resign after allegedly misusing the company’s gift cards.
We know Bentonville-based Wal-Mart gives the cards to employees for exceptional performance, but there seems to be a disproportionate number of them for sale on the open market.
On Oct. 6, there were 42 eBay auctions for Wal-Mart gift cards with a total value of thousands of dollars. Under the “completed listings” category, eBay had 149 recently closed auctions for Wal-Mart gift cards.
Several of the auctions were for Wal-Mart “mystery cards” with an undisclosed value between $5 and $300.
One active auction for a $500 gift card listed the seller’s location as “ships from an authorized Meade dealer.” Meade Instrument Corp. of Irvine, Calif., manufactures telescopes and is a Wal-Mart supplier.
The cards usually sell for slightly less than their face value. Sellers often say in their auctions that the cards are for sale because they’d rather have the cash than the Wal-Mart credit.