Why are old people buying ridiculous amounts of Steam giftcards?

[Peggo]

Why are old people buying ridiculous amounts of Steam Giftcards?

I did not know any other forum to put this in, so I will post here. I will try to keep this brief.

I work retail, and as of late, people who do not seem to be "gamer" types are buying a lot of Steam giftcards, like, $500 worth in one purchase. What I mean by non-gamer is old people, late fifties to sixties, who do not seem the type to blow a bunch of money on microtransactions.

For instance, one guy, tried to buy four $100 Steam giftcards and nothing else, and his card bounced. Then, he returned the next day, for the same thing to happen, and then promptly left again. Another old guy paid with cash only, and the money was fragmented and not a concise handful of benjamins. A separate time, an old woman bought like $300 worth, although this time more than giftcards were being purchased, so perhaps it was for a gift, however three $100 cards seems like a hefty gift.

Now if these were younger people buying, or if they were buying $20 cards, or if this type of purchase happened once in a blue moon, I wouldn't think anything of it, but all of these occurred within the span of two weeks, whilst maybe once in that period, a young guy bought a $50 card.

I know old people can be skeptical with inserting credit card info online, but all that money at once seems demonstrative of something else(?) My guess is that they choose giftcards because they are less trackable than directly buying funds online, so perhaps they are trying to hide spending habits from a spouse. But even then, what do they spend the money on? Genshin Impact? CSGO skins? Third-party websites?

Kind of a silly thing to write a post about, but I can't stop wondering about it.

[Brian9824]

Either gifts, or they are the victims of a scam. If you see this purchase you should engage them in a conversation and prompt them with something like "Oh buying gifts for the grandkids?"

Often times scammers will ask for payments in gift cards and they prey on elderly people.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

It could be a scam. I'm not sure if you know this but there are companies out there that will buy our prepaid gift cards and give us money for them. This could be that someone out there somewhere scammed these old people to convince them to buy multiplied hundreds of dollars worth of gift cards then send the gift cards to them through the mail, scamming the old people out of their money. Talk with your boss if it would be feasible but maybe you should consider implementing a store policy about taking a few moments to try and question older folks buying $400 of gift cards about what they intend to use it for, or who gifting it to, etc.

EDIT: brian9824 had the same idea as me and submitted their comment while I was typing mine. oops. Great minds think alike I guess? -_-

[✨Saint✨]

There are plenty of seniors who get scammed, the criminal will ask for giftcards in return for whatever they are promising. Usually cards worth hundreds of bucks.

[J4MESOX4D]

If someone senior is buying a $500 gift card then it's best to ask for what purpose they are doing this. Anyone who has watched these incredibly popular scam bait YouTube channels will know that the gfit card scam is the biggest and easiest in existence and many of the victims are seniors.

[Lilim]

Originally posted by brian9824:

...or they are the victims of a scam.

That would be my first thought too.

Steam Wallet Gift Card Scam

[happy]

Theyre getting scammed by People impersonating Gov Orgs. etc.

[Thiesen]

Everyone and their cat knows about the Indian "Microsoft" support scammers... there's the answer to why elderly (vulnarable) people is coerced into bying giftcards... it's money laundering:..

[happy]

Originally posted by Thiesen:

Everyone and their cat knows about the Indian "Microsoft" support scammers... there's the answer to why elderly (vulnarable) people is coerced into bying giftcards... it's money laundering:..

Thats not money laundering.

[( ( < < <🤖> > > ) )]

Originally posted by happy:

Originally posted by Thiesen:

Everyone and their cat knows about the Indian "Microsoft" support scammers... there's the answer to why elderly (vulnarable) people is coerced into bying giftcards... it's money laundering:..

Thats not money laundering.

it is if they take the card numbers and sell them for cash...

[BJWyler]

Originally posted by Peggo:

I work retail, and as of late, people who do not seem to be "gamer" types are buying a lot of Steam giftcards, like, $500 worth in one purchase. What I mean by non-gamer is old people, late fifties to sixties, who do not seem the type to blow a bunch of money on microtransactions.

Wow, what an ageist thing to say. First of all, people in their 50's are not old - the 50's are pretty much becoming middle aged at this point, so they are barely "over the hill" if anything.

Secondly, there are plenty of people in their 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, and even 90's that are hard core gamers. Console and PC gaming themselves are about 50 years old at this point, and a lot of us that were around in those formative years are still here, alive and kicking.

As for microtransactions, I once had an 80+ year old guy in an MMO guild I was in who routinely spent $1000 a month on microtransactions in various games. He had money, and no family to leave it to, so he figured he might as well have fun with it.

[Peggo]

Originally posted by BJWyler:

Originally posted by Peggo:

I work retail, and as of late, people who do not seem to be "gamer" types are buying a lot of Steam giftcards, like, $500 worth in one purchase. What I mean by non-gamer is old people, late fifties to sixties, who do not seem the type to blow a bunch of money on microtransactions.

Wow, what an ageist thing to say. First of all, people on their 50's are not old - the 50's are pretty much becoming middle aged at this point, so they are barely "over the hill" if anything.

Secondly, there are plenty of people in their 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, and even 90's that are hard core gamers. Console and PC gaming themselves are about 50 years old at this point, and a lot of us that were around in those formative years are still here, alive and kicking.

As for microtransactions, I once had an 80+ year old guy in an MMO guild I was in who routinely spent $1000 a month on microtransactions in various games. He had money, and no family to leave it to, so he figured he might as well have fun with it.

i see we found gandalf

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by BJWyler:

Originally posted by Peggo:

I work retail, and as of late, people who do not seem to be "gamer" types are buying a lot of Steam giftcards, like, $500 worth in one purchase. What I mean by non-gamer is old people, late fifties to sixties, who do not seem the type to blow a bunch of money on microtransactions.

Wow, what an ageist thing to say. First of all, people on their 50's are not old - the 50's are pretty much becoming middle aged at this point, so they are barely "over the hill" if anything.

Secondly, there are plenty of people in their 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, and even 90's that are hard core gamers. Console and PC gaming themselves are about 50 years old at this point, and a lot of us that were around in those formative years are still here, alive and kicking.

As for microtransactions, I once had an 80+ year old guy in an MMO guild I was in who routinely spent $1000 a month on microtransactions in various games. He had money, and no family to leave it to, so he figured he might as well have fun with it.

While all true, what OP is talking about does look like people getting scammed. So it's not a bad thing to approach people about it.

[wesnef]

Yeah, there's lots of giftcard scams these days.

[Satoru]

Originally posted by wesnef:

Yeah, there's lots of giftcard scams these days.

Not really a 'these days' thing. This has been prevalent for like a decade or more. It used to be money orders. Now to prevent tracing the scammers

1) want gift cards
2) demand you pay IN CASH for them to prevent you from invalidating the cards with a chargeback later if you use a credit card

[Hobbit XIII]

I remember back in the new days of online gaming I was asked regularly 'not being funny but aren't you a bit old to be playing computer games' being early 20s then.

When I first read the opening post I thought that is incredibly ageist. There are a lot of gamers out there of great variety of ages.

Then saw the other posts of scamming that is a really good point. I would recommend like the others strike up a conversation with them asking what games they like to play etc to get a feel of the situation.