Actually, there's a lot of demand regarding such digital and/or physical gift cards which gives thieves a chance to make their move and lay down a trap for newbies and even experienced guys with a great need for this thing. You should be extremely careful while dealing with these sellers and only look for the most trustworthy person who is actually in business whether you try to find one over this forum or somewhere else. Although, I've seen even most trusted users turning into scammers, let's talk about how they can scam you:
- By either giving you a used gift card number
- Or giving you a gift card worth less than what's promised
- Worst would be when they leave you without giving anything to you and just run away with your BTC,
And as you know, BTC is irreversible so you can't even claim anything back. So, be very much aware of the purchases you make and always look for a very trustworthy guy to purchase such things. I won't advice about any escrow because my experience says that nobody will accept to become an escrow for such deals due to the fact that they can't check the gift card for you and they won't bet their dignity for some bucks where you may come up and say that the escrow cheated you by redeeming the code himself.
There's one thing that you didn't mention which was the risk of purchasing a card that was initially bought with a stolen credit card.
That's the risk I think that is most important to realize when you're transacting with any kind of gift card - that you are trusting the seller to be providing you with a legitimately purchased card.
Even escrow won't be able to protect you from a fraudulent gift card.You may be able to spend the GC and redeem it, sure, but you may be in trouble with law enforcement given that the goods are shipped to your address.
For those who are saying that purse.io solves this issue, this is not true. A lot of the steeply discounted gift card balances on there are most likely fraudulent in one way or another, and despite their $10k guarantee program, do you really want to go through the ordeal of potentially having police knocking on your door?