Let’s say you used one of those sites that offer dining discounts to buy a gift certificate you no longer want. Don’t fret! A new site, Lifesta, lets you sell your voucher to someone who didn’t read about the restaurant’s rat problem on Yelp. “It’s a marketplace,” says co-founder Eran Davidov, noting that sellers often offer the deals at the same price they paid for them, or just slightly higher to account for the site’s 99 cent transaction fee and 8 percent commission. “People will buy or not.” But is this kind of thing kosher? Or is it on the same questionable ground as reservation scalping?
Davidov tells us: “We did go through the terms of the big sites like Groupon and there were no limitations about charging money or reselling certificates that we were able to find. They might change their terms of use at any time [to prevent it], but we don’t really think that’s a likely step for them.” Such a restriction, he says, would probably translate into fewer sales by the discount sites, since consumers would be assuming more risk that their certificates would go to waste, unused and unsalable.
Current deals include a $25 Groupon certificate from late May that the bearer can exchange for $75 worth of wine from Wine Insiders and two $25 gift certificates to 10 Downing going for $8 each.
