Amazon Offers Trade-Ins for Gift Card Exchange

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Among the many extraordinary ways Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) has to draw consumers to its sites, and to get those consumers to spend money, is its trade-in program. The e-commerce company actually allows customers to send in a huge number of items that are eligible for this program in exchange for Amazon gift cards. Of course, those cards make the same consumers spend more money at Amazon. It is a virtuous e-commerce cycle.

How it’s done:

The Amazon Trade-In Program allows customers to receive an Amazon.com Gift Card in exchange for over a million eligible items including DVDs, CDs, video games, electronics, and books. The process is easy and convenient with free shipping, an immediate offer, and no required registration or listing.

How it works:

Depending on your location, Trade-in submissions may take up to 10 business days to arrive before your submission is processed. The packages you sent can be tracked anytime in Your Trade-in Account.

Once your item is received and verified, you’ll receive an e-mail notification within 2 business days informing you whether your items were accepted or rejected. You can find the status of your trade-in anytime in Your Trade-in Account. Once your trade-in has been paid, you’ll see the amount when viewing your gift card balance.

What qualifies:

In general, all items must be in at least acceptable condition and the item you wish to trade in must match the exact version displayed in the Trade-In search results or on the product page on Amazon.com.

What it costs:

When using the pre-paid shipping label, shipping trade-in items is completely free, and there are no other fees. When submitting a trade-in, customers will print a pre-paid U.S. Postal Service shipping label for sending in all items. If a trade-in item is not accepted, and is returned, there is no cost for return shipping.

In another stroke of genius, Amazon has turned used items that might be discarded by customers into a new source of revenue.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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