I recently got deferred from a blood donation program -- not for a bad reason, mind you, as I simply had donated blood too recently for them to allow me to donate again. They thanked me for the attempt and sent me on my way with a $50 debit card. Nice deal, right?
So I take the free $50 and go over to Amazon to see what the world has for me. I don't generally buy things for myself, so when I get what is effectively free money, I splurge. I made sure, as I assembled my order, to keep the total under $50 as I had no intention of spending what is actually my own money. This was house money. So I ended up with an order which was somewhere in the $47 range.
This isn't the first time -- I have gotten cards like this for various promotions and each time, I use up an amount close to the max, but not the whole thing. Then, as is my practice, I put the card aside and forget about it. What use is a card with a buck or three on it? I'm not going out to buy penny candy so that money is as good as inaccessible. And with the number of cards with which I have engaged in the last 2 years, I am sure that if I collected them all and had some way to check their balances, I would be able to piece together a solid ten or twelve bucks.
But I don't have all the cards, I don't remember how to access each one and I'm way too lazy to try any harder. And therefore, somewhere there is some amount of money which is legally mine but which I am apparently "leaving on the table." So here's my deal:
I will continue doing this but will work to stack up the cards.
You will buy all the cards off of me and take upon yourself the work of discovering how much is left on each. You can keep all of that but I will ask for an up front payment of what I am confident is less than half of the total potential value of the cards. Same with random gift cards, but then, I would only charge a quarter of what I suspect is on each.
Takers?
