Work Some Magic - Turn Your Coins and Cash into an Online Gift Certificate

Here's a piece on how to turn your coins into an online gift certificate courtesy of ARA Content:

Once considered a novelty, online ordering has become a popular way to shop. A 2005 study by Shop.org and Forrester Research predicts that online sales, excluding travel, are expected to reach $109.6 billion by year end. Consumers love online shopping for its convenience - they can shop anytime, anywhere that they have access to a computer. As more and more retailers put their wares on the Web, shoppers can find just about anything they're looking for.

Until now, you needed a credit card to shop on the Internet. A new offer from Coinstar, the leader in self-service coin counting, and Amazon.com changes all that. It lets customers instantly convert their jar of change into a gift certificate redeemable at Amazon.com and pay no coin counting fee.

And idle change at home can buy more than you think. "The average household has $99 worth of change lying around," says Gretchen Marks, vice president of marketing for Coinstar, Inc. "Now, thanks to this new program, people can turn this change into clothing, music, books, movies and more from Amazon.com. Best of all, there is no coin counting fee."

Coinstar estimates that approximately $10.5 billion in spare change is sitting unused in American households. Prior to the joint venture with Amazon.com, there was no easy way for consumers to spend that money online. "One quarter of the U.S. population doesn't do anything with their change, primarily because they don't want to pay a fee and it is inconvenient to cash in. Visiting a Coinstar kiosk when you grocery shop solves both problems," says Marks.

To take advantage of this new program, all customers have to do is visit a Coinstar Center at their local supermarket, which they can locate by visiting www.coinstar.com. Users simply insert their coins and bills into the machine, select the Amazon.com option and then a receipt is printed with a redemption code that can be immediately used to make purchases at Amazon.com.

The gift certificate redeemable at Amazon.com provides millions of adults and kids who prefer to use cash or don't have credit cards the ability to shop online. "This is a really convenient way to use your 'found money' to shop online," says Marks.

Coinstar also allows consumers to convert loose change into a variety of gift cards redeemable at leading national retailers such as Starbucks, Linens 'n Things, Pier 1 and Hollywood Video. And there's no service charge or coin counting fee when you redeem your coins for gift cards or gift certificates at thousands of supermarket locations nationwide.

To find out which supermarkets offer the program on their Coinstar machines, visit www.coinstar.com.

Wow! Did you read those stats? Again:

• The average household has $99 worth of change lying around
• Coinstar estimates that approximately $10.5 billion in spare change is sitting unused in American households

That's not bad at all. You may want to hunt around a bit. That new iPod Shuffle you want might be sitting around your house in the form of spare change. ;-)

Comments

[scooter]

i just rolled $66.50 on Sunday.... it only took 6 months for that to build up!

[Blaine Moore (Run to Win)]

Five Cent Nickel wrote about coinstar not too long ago: http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2005/12/19/use-coinstar-for-free/

As for myself, I regularly use my change for bus fare, for laundry, and for paying for things in exact change or to get bills back. I keep change in my truck for tolls, which don't get used now that my state is on EZPass finally, but pull it out for breakfast sandwiches and the like after I work out.

I would estimate that I have about $15-$20 in change at any given time, and that $10-$12 or so is in susan b anthony dollars and half dollars that don't get carried around regularly and so just sit in my fire engine piggy bank.

[jim]

Think of all the money in the form of pennies that is sitting around not doing a single thing... eliminate the penny!