

Amazon Coins - genofon
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html/ref=zeroes_surl_c_landing?docId=1000745313&ref_=tsm_1_fb_s_uk_mwnu2i
coins to spend in app and games
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DanHulton
Aw christ, no.

I hope this dies quickly, or at least isn't as horrifying as Facebook credits.

See, I worked at a Facebook game company when the Facebook credit thing came
online and it was _universally_ a bad deal for game devs. It was Yet Another
Payment Chain to implement, a weird checkout flow (we had an off-site version
of the same game which could use PayPal, but not FB credits, whereas on the
Facebook version of the game, you could use FB credits, but not PayPal, etc),
and credits were actually worth way less than actual cash and you never knew
how much less until way later.

See, Facebook offered similar incentives as Amazon here: free promotional
Facebook credits to get people using the system, bonus credits for larger
orders, etc. However, those credits were marked as "promotional" internally,
and if you accepted promotionial FB credits, you didn't get any money. That's
right, the game devs ate the cost of promoting FB credits. Plus, you had no
idea if you were accepting promotional FB credits or real ones, or if certain
big companies got a sweeter deal on getting a higher real/promotional balance,
AND you didn't know how many of your credits were real or promotional until
the balance report came in, making it kind of difficult to identify just how
much money you'd actually earned.

Now maybe Amazon will eat their promotional costs themselves here, but to any
dev considering implementing this, be wary, and read everything. I know that's
standard advice, obviously, but it should be especially so with your cashflow,
and I'm _personally_ wary as fuck about this, given just how similar to FB
credits it appears.

~~~
lightbritefight
|Now maybe Amazon will eat their promotional costs themselves here.

You hit the nail on the head. If the account of the pocketcast devs is
correct, in order to be featured as Amazons "free app of the day," you eat all
costs as the dev. I would expect they are doing the same thing here.

[http://blog.shiftyjelly.com/2011/08/02/amazon-app-store-
rott...](http://blog.shiftyjelly.com/2011/08/02/amazon-app-store-rotten-to-
the-core/)

~~~
DanHulton
Yeah, I'd be SUPER surprised if it's not FB credits all over again, with devs
receiving scads of no-value Amazon promotional coins.

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__pThrow
Only semi-related, I must have $200 in loose change collected over the years
(and years). What the hell to do with them?

Turns out I can take them to coinstar at the local Krogers and turn them into
cash but they will take a chunk of the change that I am too miserly to part
with.

OR, wow, I can turn them into an Amazon gift card! I mean, I can turn them
into Home Depot cards (and many other cards), but I live in an apartment.

So that's awesome and I test it with $20 in quarters, AND, AND, AND,

Machine almost instantly jams.

No one uses the coinstar except for the most part as trash can so when the
manager rips the machine apart we find safety pins, and buttons, and all sorts
of crap.

Oh well.

Hey, the coinstar.com tells me Walmart has a machine too. Let's check that out
and and and -- the walmart machines don't allow conversion to Amazon money. My
guess is that Amazon is Walmarts biggest enemy.

Oh well. I now have about $180 of loose change.

~~~
atdrummond
Most banks will convert change for free for account holders. Local banks and
credit unions often won't even ask if one has an account.

~~~
ToastyMallows
Yea but you have to roll them up yourself in those paper sleeves.

To quote George Costanza while rolling coins: "You want me to roll six
thousand of these?! What, should I quit my job?!"

~~~
sp332
No way, they have awesome fast coin counting machines at banks. You dump it in
and it counts in real-time, like 15 seconds and you're done.

~~~
kayhi
What bank?

~~~
AjithAntony
My local Chase branch does free coin counting as well as other banks that are
actually all Chase banks now.

It never made sense to me that a bank would want you to bring in rolled coins.
How could they trust the contents?

~~~
ToastyMallows
They must weigh them or something. When I rolled my own change once I was
short 1 cent in a dollar penny roll and they sent me snail mail about it.

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sp332
Are Amazon coins region-locked? The USD version is much cheaper.
[http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-500-Coins/dp/B0096E8CQA/ref=sr_...](http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-500-Coins/dp/B0096E8CQA/ref=sr_sp-
atf_title_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385132993&sr=8-1&keywords=amazon+coin)

------
TomGullen
Just another centralised virtual currency. Don't see the value offering here
really.

~~~
th0br0
They did pick a peculiar logo though.

~~~
sp332
That's clearly not an amazon though. She has both... uh, mazzes.

------
josh-wrale
Is this an "affiliate" link? As in, do you make money or any equivalent when I
click this [and buy something]?

I see: ref_=tsm_1_fb_s_uk_mwnu2i

Probably harmless. Just curious.

~~~
thwarted
Amazon affiliate links have a URL component (in the path or GET variables)
that match the glob "tag=*-20" (supposedly it could end with numbers other
than 20 but I've never seen anything other than 20).

~~~
bitemix
US is -20. Other countries have other numbers.

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clarkmoody
I might take a second look if they allowed it to float against other
currencies and opened an exchange.

------
couchand
"What is Amazon Coins?"

