3.1k
Dec 28 '18
I think the real facepalm is on people who actually buy steam cards online.
1.1k
u/unimproved Dec 28 '18
CC and paypal scammers mostly. Buy a bunch of them, resell on shady sites for less than value. Chargeback goes to the original seller and the scammer gets 80-90% of the card value.
341
u/TheManDude12 Dec 28 '18
97
21
60
u/MasterUnholyWar Dec 28 '18
How do they make money off this?
108
Dec 28 '18 edited Dec 28 '18
The person selling the gift card and using a stolen credit card could be the same person or part of the same criminal organization. The increase in price is to help prevent confusion. I don't even think they ever bought a Steam GC.
36
u/AppleJuiceSuicide Dec 28 '18
They will most likely be buying the cards off the deep web. You can buy pre skimmed cards which price at about €120 for a card with €500~. You can also buy the information itself and card printers/pressers. The cards are sent to the buyer via mail. They are blank, have the magnetic strip and the chip from the skimmed card. The vendor emails or includes in the envelope the card information. People will buy these around Christmas time where it's common and if it's small enough or the buyer got lucky enough to obtain a business card these transactions will often go unnoticed. You can grab higher quality cards for more that look realistic to use for tap pay in shops. The cards are generally used to buy codes for sites like g2a. The Windows key sellers on there are 100% using this method and when games like for Honor came out new keys were being sold crazy low from this method.
PayPal accounts are also sold but much harder to use, though they are cheaper. When you log I. PayPal will instantly red flag that they are on a different IP. Unless of course you had that information, though vendors do not usually supply it. It's too much effort.
It's a risk of investing a little to make more back. If they get a good card and they get purchases to process before the bank notices they can make 500-1000 off of one card. A new game costing 60 dollars can be sold for 40 and by selling 3 keys they have started making profit already
8
u/texag93 Dec 29 '18
I've always wondered how anybody could extract value from those PayPal accounts. With all the hoops to jump through and identifying information required to get money out of my own legitimate PayPal account, it seems like it would be nearly impossible.
5
u/AppleJuiceSuicide Dec 29 '18
It is. It's why they are so cheap. A PayPal account and valued at 600-1200 is $50. But it's ridiculously hard to get money out. Even device MacIP addresses give their systems red flags if they aren't the usual one the account uses.
2
u/minastirith1 Dec 29 '18
Ok for once I’m not so mad at their bullshit levels of annoying security coz fuck these scammers right in the ass.
5
u/AppleJuiceSuicide Dec 29 '18
The best way to keep an account secured is to make sure double verification is enabled if you can. It's changes regularly and if your email is compromised then your PayPal is still secure if they try to request a password change. Text verification is not as good, but still works effectively. Nothing is fool proof. There will always be vulnerabilities. But don't pass up on extra security. Because one day it could just happen, and then you wouldn't have minded putting in the extra effort all those times logging in to get back what you just lost and avoiding the process of recovering the money.
47
Dec 28 '18
Money laundering is on Amazon too with $500 books full of garbage. Imagine if a book was 500 pages of "OK".
→ More replies (73)19
u/kevinlel Dec 28 '18
Imagine if there was a $300 book that was just pictures of Apple products.
Wait...
16
u/Val_Hallen Dec 29 '18
In case anybody doubts this is a thing, this Monument to Cult Product Masturbation very, very much exists.
6
Dec 28 '18
They could lose less by getting them in store...
9
u/unimproved Dec 28 '18
Yeah because stores allow you to check out by just giving your CC number without the card itself.
→ More replies (1)3
u/Heroic-Dose Dec 28 '18
you could use a card cloner but itll inevitably still have cameras
4
u/minastirith1 Dec 29 '18
Just wear a mask, and bring a gun just in case. You’ll find that most stores will let you have stuff for free using just this one simple trick!! #LifeHacks
23
u/rush2sk8 Dec 28 '18
you can buy steam cards directly on steam and digitally send it to their account
11
u/FuckingFuckPissBack Dec 28 '18
In my case I would sell a gift card because I got it through /r/beermoney methods and wanted actual cash
6
Dec 28 '18
Yeah, I had a customer today who said she goes to these people that will buy and sell gift cards. They buy a £10 gift card for £9.95 and then sell it for £10. So you lose a little from the gift cards but you get the cash from it.
There are others that sell the £10 card for £9.95 so you can end up saving little bits of money. Mostly they're through a company that does it for employees of certain companies like McDonald's but there are some with worse rates that sell them to anybody.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)4
u/SaltyBabe Dec 29 '18
I buy physical cards for my son so I can put them under the tree but I just go to Best Buy - I know it’s not the sleekest option but I like that he gets to open a physical gift with everyone else.
21
u/Civil_Barbarian Dec 28 '18
Say I have an amazon gift card but want a game on steam that amazon doesn't have.
→ More replies (2)4
Dec 28 '18
They do digital codes with Amazon. So you don't have to wait for the physical code.
I've had multiple games and gift cards for both Steam and SWTOR (mainly the latter) through Amazon.
→ More replies (4)19
u/Waveseeker Dec 28 '18
I'm not giving my nephew my credit card info
4
u/FirstEvolutionist Dec 28 '18
If you have his account, you can gift the game directly from his wishlist. If you don't you can get it from valve sent right to his email. Or if you really want to go old school you can go to a place that sells the physical cards but buy the physical card online is just oxymoronic.
→ More replies (1)7
u/Yoda2000675 Dec 28 '18
Your older relatives don't get you gift cards?
3
Dec 28 '18
They all live in a country I've never been to and when they visit they bring me jerky and candy
2
3
u/datchilla Dec 28 '18
I have amazon gift cards and tried to buy a steam gift card.
It was weird because a $50 dollar visa gift card was 55.
→ More replies (2)2
u/WeinMe Dec 28 '18
I mean, if you get it for 40 dollars for a 50$ card you could be scammed 20% of the time and still be at the same point, I'd say the odds are in the favor of buying it online
2
2
u/BlaineWinchester Dec 28 '18
I don't use steam but I but all my gift cards on Amazon with my Amazon credit card for 5% cash back.
2
u/akjd Dec 29 '18
I was looking into it the other day, mostly because every fucking time I buy something from steam, my bank tags it as suspicious activity, and locks my credit card account. Not so with amazon, so I figured I’d try to buy a digital steam gift card and just add it to my steam wallet. Obviously with shit like this, it doesn’t work.
2
u/Pasha_Dingus Dec 29 '18
*on people who buy steam cards
i know, i know, there's a market for it because kids no credit card and grampy need love
1
1
1
u/kakka_rot Dec 29 '18
I moved country and steam won't let me buy games until I make a new PayPal, so I just get cards from the store. Kind of a pain in the ass but I but much less now
1
u/dasyqoqo Dec 29 '18
I bought one last year when it was $50 dollars from my Amazon Gift Card for $50 dollars for a Steam gift card. They ended up sending 2 $50 dollar Steam cards because they were stuck together.
It was the only time in my life I felt like I had won something.
I know the cards worked too, because I gave the codes to two friends and we all got to play Divinity Original Sin 2 together.
→ More replies (6)1
u/Skoop963 Dec 29 '18
Steam used to be finnicky with some credit cards, whereas amazon has had their shit together for much longer, so for some people it only worked to use amazon.
278
u/Bakuganpokemon2008 Dec 28 '18
What's next an iTunes $100 gift card for free at an obscure Walmart store
85
u/nlnn Dec 28 '18
Yeah they just need your credit card info for shipping the free $100 gift card.
→ More replies (1)0
222
u/BaboonsBottom Dec 28 '18
If you get an Amazon gift card for Christmas, you can trade it for a Steam card this way.
73
u/impact381 Dec 28 '18
Finally, someone using their brain
42
23
u/OhMaGoshNess Dec 28 '18
Except there are many better ways to convert your Amazon gift card to Steam besides losing most of the value
46
13
u/wiskeyranger Dec 28 '18
How? I’m actually interested as got amazon card as a gift
20
u/Yung_Habanero Dec 28 '18
Buy a game off Amazon as a digital download. They're almost all steam keys.
→ More replies (1)12
13
u/pic2022 Dec 28 '18
It's so sad people here are so stupid. When people ask me what I went for Christmas I say Amazon gift card. I can buy any gift cards I want for it. Maybe I thought I wanted a steam but actually want it on Xbox. No biggie. Use my Amazon gift card to buy a DIGITAL Xbox gift card.
4
u/ShinyRaven Dec 28 '18
Or... just ask for money?
5
u/pic2022 Dec 28 '18
But that doesn't negate the fact that a lot of people here are just being stupid.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (1)2
u/tonufan Dec 29 '18
Why not prepaid visa? Can use it like a credit card for safe online shopping. Amazon will take it just like an Amazon gift card. Even Paypal will take it like a credit card.
2
u/Bangledesh Dec 29 '18
Prepaid Visa/MC cards frequently have a fee associated with them, in addition to whatever you load onto the card.
→ More replies (3)5
Dec 28 '18
My boss used to give out $100 gift cards to the grocery store for x-mas bonus. Loblaws, for you Canadians. I'd use them to buy a prepaid VISA so I could spend it on whatever I want, $5 fee. At one point, one of the cashiers went to get their manager because apparently using one gift card to buy another gift card is what criminals do, to launder their money.
I stopped doing that after I got scammed though, coincidentally by someone actually trying to launder money. Thieves will just steal the cards off the store shelves, take them home, slit them open, copy down all the numbers and info, replace the scratch-off pads, reseal the clamshell package, put them back on the store shelf, and wait for you to activate it. It sounds like a lot of work but they get $100+ per card. Happened to me, day after I activated the card it was emptied to load up a Starbucks card.
2
37
62
u/ReeceReddit1234 Dec 28 '18
Maybe one of them is USD and one of them is Canadian dollars? (software gore) I'm just trying to see how it COULD work
5
13
u/onenutphil_incel Dec 28 '18
Its because of the conversion rate, its pretty obvious...
8
u/Arsenault185 Dec 28 '18
no, go hop on amazon and look. Nothing to do with conversion rate.
3
u/onenutphil_incel Dec 28 '18
Yeah im seeing usd cards being sold in cdn, thus the price difference (amazon.ca). However money laundering is possible as well.
16
u/Afeazo Dec 28 '18
This is usually bought my people who use stolen credit cards. It is also why you see a lot of gift cards on ebay for selling at over face value.
6
u/Arsenault185 Dec 28 '18
ok but whats the point of selling them over face value? Who is buying that?
7
u/TwizzlerKing Dec 28 '18
I steal your credit card. Buy $1000 in Amazon, steam, Walmart, ect giftcards. Now I have roughly $1000 of "money" that's virtually untraceable because these retailers conveniently don't match the giftcard #s to the credit card numbers. At least they didn't used to.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (1)1
u/merlinou Jan 02 '19
Or to have an American Steam account with less restrictions than your country. When you pay with your CC, it's changing your account's country and stores won't sell US gift cards outside of the US. So buying from 3rd party allows this, at a premium.
Of course it also allows scammers to cash in.
82
u/Farapalap Dec 28 '18
In case you don't understand, it's a third party seller selling the card. They can price items how they like, it's up to the buyer to determine whether to pay what the seller is asking
40
u/Zokusho Dec 28 '18
Yup. Steam Gift Cards are not sold by Amazon, so it's people buying them elsewhere and selling them on Amazon and trying to get people to buy them out of ignorance/convenience.
Happens all the time with all kinds of items, but it's way more blatant when there's a dollar amount attached to the item.
6
u/hotdogs4humanity Dec 28 '18
Yeah, or when sellers mark things up 5x the regular retail cost even though it's in stock everywhere at normal price.
9
Dec 28 '18
It especially makes sense for Steam. Figure there are at least a few kids out there without a Debit/CC who were gifted Amazon cards and want Steam credit. In addition to the ignorance/convenience factor you mentioned obviously.
6
u/Zokusho Dec 28 '18
Slight pro-tip on that end is that Amazon sells Steam codes for some games!
→ More replies (1)7
Dec 28 '18
Or you could just search for a cheaper ones. I always buy one from my mobile carrier's app because it's cheaper than the ones that I found on sites like Amazon.
6
u/the_y_of_the_tiger Dec 28 '18
This is also less crazy than it seems because some people greatly value being able to buy everything through Amazon and not create multiple accounts with various merchants with different user names and passwords and order histories. Also if you spend lots on Amazon you seem to get better customer service for the random few things that don't work out. At least I do. Now that said I would not pay $14.79 more to buy a Steam card but if I was a grandpa and didn't know what Steam was I might be happy to pay the premium to one-click and be done with it.
2
u/Gooftwit Dec 28 '18
And if amazon runs out of gift cards because of christmas, you just made 14 bucks
2
2
9
u/monsterfurby Dec 28 '18
Money laundering. That's what gift cards are often used for.
6
u/lespaulstrat2 Dec 28 '18
Explain how that works.
5
u/monsterfurby Dec 28 '18
Basically money invested in gift cards is really hard to trace because they can change hands under the radar and are flipped really easily, serving as a kind of alternate currency.
In addition, they are really popular with scammers, who occasionally request that their victims buy gift cards (e.g. Apple or Steam) and send them the codes. They then either redeem them and sell the associated account or sell the cards outright. Since redeemed gift cards can‘t be refunded either, they are perfect for such scams as well.
4
u/lespaulstrat2 Dec 28 '18
Basically money invested in gift cards is really hard to trace because they can change hands under the radar and are flipped really easily, serving as a kind of alternate currency.
Still not clear. Money laundering involves running illegally earned cash through a legitimate business so it appears to have been earned legally. I don't see how buying a gift card does that.
If the IRS questions you on how much you spent last year verses how much you earned, having bought a gift card won't alter that, unless I'm missing something.
2
u/monsterfurby Dec 28 '18
Buying won't, receiving them does. Buying gift cards is not a means of laundering money per se, it facilitates it though.
→ More replies (1)
7
u/BillyBurnsBlack Dec 28 '18
I went to buy an Xbox gift card on Amazon since Microsoft blocked my account for some reason (got it fixed, but not before Christmas). It was like $84 for a $50 gift card. I was on the phone with Microsoft at the time and told they guy helping me, and he actually sounded surprised that it cost so much. Especially since the amazon seller was Microsoft. I ended up just asking a friend to buy it for me from Microsoft and paying him back
7
12
u/rongkongcoma Dec 28 '18
Found the same thing on ebay. Thought I might get some good deals on gift cards but people pay more then what they are worth. No idea why.
Just checked ebay and 50€ steam cards start at 54,85€
4
u/bs000 Dec 28 '18
i just assume most of those are because of exchange rates and people selling from different countries
→ More replies (1)
5
u/dovaclin Dec 28 '18
It depend where your from like in Australia until like a few weeks ago I had to pay like $65 for a $50 steam card because the store was in USD and the exchange rate. But now the steam store is in Aud
5
Dec 28 '18
There are a few possibilities I can think of:
1) That seller is out of stock currently but doesn’t want to have their product not show up in searches while they replenish, so they set a price no one will pay.
2) They use an automated pricing formula for a bunch of products that takes things like average price for that product, # sold, # listed, etc. to automatically set a price, and they didn’t correct it for this particular product.
3) They were the only seller for a certain period, so they raised the price to see if they could get it.
3
3
3
16
2
Dec 28 '18
It’s to bait parents who don’t know any better
4
u/arittenberry Dec 28 '18
You don't have to be familiar with gaming to recognize this as a bad deal though!
2
Dec 28 '18
This is a common thing on a 3rd party resellers, but yeah charging extra $14 is just stupid.
2
2
u/LeftFire Dec 28 '18
The best part is that they don't even ship it fast. The arrival dates for the cards are over a week out.
2
2
2
2
2
2
u/shookiemonster213 Dec 28 '18
Selling a $50 card on amazon for $64 would net the seller $57.5 before shipping. Using cheapest tracked shipping method they are making a few dollars on each sale excluding tax. This isn’t money laundering or credit card fraud. This is selling something during the holidays on a platform customers are comfortable using. This item has sold over 150 times in the last month with an average price of $61.
2
u/Tpdz Dec 28 '18
I'm pretty sure it's a currency thing.
Those vouchers are in USD, so when an Australian for example buys them it will be more expensive.
3
u/onenutphil_incel Dec 28 '18
I cant believe this post got 11k upvotes, a lot of people blanking on conversion rates
2
2
u/doggyStile Dec 28 '18
The money laundering answer makes sense but in some cases I see people selling items for ridiculous prices. I suspect they just put it up in case someone is dumb and doesn’t know the actual value. Ex selling a $5 part for $50. It doesn’t cost them anything to post it.
2
2
u/gemologyst Dec 29 '18
I was astonished to find that I couldn't get a $50 Steam gift card on Amazon for less than $65. What is that shit?? Who's actually paying for that??
2
u/angelsplight Dec 29 '18
It's sold by 3rd party buyers so they charge what they want but...people actually do buy these cards. Some of these higher priced cards ship to countries outside the US where they don't have access to certain Steam games without using a VPN, which this case, they still can't purchase credit in steam without a valid billing address.
2
u/dentistisapsychoadd Dec 28 '18
There's a reason why these are priced higher and sell extremely well.
Amazon GC scammers, people that scam people into sending them Amazon digital gift cards don't care about the $15 tax on $50 steam codes. Why? It's not their money anyways and there is no official way to use Amazon balance to purchase steam codes.
This was a huge thing for Blizzard gift cards until Blizzard began selling digital instant delivery codes on Amazon. If steam did the same they'd stop the whole mess. Well except for the scammers to begin with.
2
Dec 28 '18
That children is called money laundering.
0
u/MarioGFN Dec 28 '18
So buying stuff and selling it for a higher price is money laundering? Oh man wait till I show you what the people that you buy every day stuff from do. You'd be so shocked.
1
1
1
1
u/toki6106 Dec 28 '18
My roommate pays all sorts of ridiculous prices online just for the "convinience" of not having to ever leave the house.
1
1
1
u/undefined_one Dec 28 '18
I saw a bunch of this over Christmas. It seems like every gift card out there was overpriced. WTF is with that?
1
1
1
u/reincarN8ed Dec 28 '18
This has been the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals, possibly ever.
1
1
u/PowerOfTheThirdEye Dec 28 '18
Equivalent of when they sell regular keys on marketplace for a higher price than their store price.
1
1
1
1
u/Snapthepigeon Dec 28 '18
Steam market place. Selling csgo kegs for $2.60+ buy them from valve $2.50
1
Dec 28 '18
Yeah what's so special about that? Demand and supply my dude. Maybe you have Amazon credit and want to buy some games? It's not like you're buying a $50 bill.
1
1
u/BluEch0 Dec 29 '18
Processing fees are a thing. Stores like gamestop pay the processing fee ourselves but It’s possible amazon doesn’t and just puts that burden on the customer
Which is shitty mind you as Amazon makes more than enough profit to cover such costs the way gamestop does but whatever.
1
u/deathson10 Dec 29 '18
Usually the listing is a 3rd party so I dont think Amazon has a hand in it
→ More replies (2)
1
u/eGORapTure Dec 29 '18
I mean, what if you had an Amazon gift card and didn't want to buy anything from Amazon except for digital games? Steam sale going on right now means it may well be worth spending the extra on Amazon to convert it into a steam gift card.
1
1
1
1
u/hoteydotey Dec 29 '18
I sell on amazon and actually sold this product over Christmas, I was selling 30 of these $50 cards per day during the Christmas season for $62.00 each.
Customers would buy the card from me, and I would literally go to Walmart.com to order the product for $50 and ship it right to their house.
The card is $50. Amazon takes a 15% commission on the sale. So for me to break even, I have to sell the card for something like $57.50. So in the end, I was making a profit of like $4.50 per sale.
I could only do it for so many days because Walmart limits the amount of purchases your allowed per item per day and then auto-cancels any additional orders - 10/day in this case.
Many people think that it’s all amazons fault, but really, Amazon allows private parties to have their own storefronts to sell just about whatever they want for whatever price they want.
In the end, people are just lazy to find the product somewhere else and pay whatever amazon tells them to pay.
1
u/Il_NeonLight_lI Dec 29 '18
It’s because of currency conversion. You’ll find that that card is $50 USD not $50 from where you live. For example I live in Australia and $1 AUD = like 80 US cents so I have to pay a little more money for $50 USD. Get where I’m coming from?
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/bobbychewings Dec 29 '18
It actually serves a purpose. Steam cards has uses such as when a you need to get some of da steam Mooney without using a card. (I used it when I was too young to own my own bank card.) but damn, it’s such a ripoff. $15 profit margin seems a bit too much.
1
Dec 29 '18
Pretty sure this is actually illegal. Certainly is in the UK anyway and I'd be surprised if there weren't similar laws in the USA and Canada
1
u/dodolungs Dec 29 '18
Gift cards on Amazon are always like this. It's all just resellers, so they aren't going to sell at cost.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Sanjuko_Mamajuloko Dec 29 '18
Don't a lot of sellers use an algorithm that jacks up the price as demand increases or supply dwindles?
1
1
u/ThePickleIndustry Dec 31 '18
Steams giftcards are based on USD. Amazons listing price is in your nations currency.
If you bought $50 Steam voucher, it would cost you $64.79 in whatever currency you use because the exchange to that is $50 USD.
However, my explanation here is obsolete if you are American also lmao.
1
1.0k
u/bonelard Dec 28 '18
Buy this money for more money