Your thoughts on this auction?

MyUserNamesTaken

devils_spawn wrote:

Has the buyer you know provided the name & address of the seller to Subway?

If so then Subway should have reported this to the police with the culprits details to have it stopped.

Sounds to me like Subway may be dealing with this on an amateur level and do not understand the options open to them.

The seller's information, as provided by Ebay, does not have an address (it gives his area as being Middlesex, though). It only provided a mobile phone number. Subway has the mobile number.

user051105

I have read this with interest, once a week at work, we all get together in the office and workshops and get a subway order together, its good you can fax your order in.

As I always go, we end with about 50 stamps from the store, are you saying it is wrong to put these on ebay for sale, we have about 300 stamps now.

Or should we just give them away, no one here would complain if we offered them to people for free.

kathfisch

user051105 wrote:

I have read this with interest, once a week at work, we all get together in the office and workshops and get a subway order together, its good you can fax your order in.

As I always go, we end with about 50 stamps from the store, are you saying it is wrong to put these on ebay for sale, we have about 300 stamps now.

Or should we just give them away, no one here would complain if we offered them to people for free.

Well, yes, it is wrong to put them for sale on ebay because they say "not for sale" on them. But if you use the loophole of saying that sellers are paying for your time, not the stamps themselves, well then we are into a whole different argument :rotfl:

The thing is, why on earth would you want to sell them? Why not save them up until you have enough for one free sub (if you buy a drink) for everybody and save yourself some money!

The only reason to sell in such large quantities as the seller in question is because you have stolen them in order to make money, not to get some free sandwhiches :rotfl:

coolio_2

MyUserNamesTaken wrote:

To top it all off, he emails for positive feedback before sending out the goods. If you want any more info, drop me an email.

I know of 6 orders having been placed with this seller and not once has he e-mailed asking for positive feedback, even after sending. In fact, the only correspondence received was very polite and was apologising profusely for the delay.

So from personal experience of friends and family having purchased from this seller, your statements don't ring totally true.

It could well be that he runs a subway franchise and sells the coupons on the side that are provided to him by Subway. At best it shows bad sportmanship as it leaves other branches down.

THE_MIDDLEMAN

tbh the seller prob works for them so what, If you want the tickets buy them, use them little and often in diff sub's and you have no worries.

Except the amount of MSG or Sat fats you are consumng lol

taxiphil

There are loads of people selling Subway stamps on Ebay. I've bought a few batches, although none off this particular seller, and never had any problems using them.

If you think it's dishonest and is causing Subway brances to give away loads of free subs at a loss, let me just tell you something. All their food and drink carries huge profit margins, and the Sub Club was carefully designed to ensure that even when they give a "free" sub with a completed card, the cost of the drink still keeps them in profit.

The cost price of the 6 inch sub is between 40p and 58p, depending on the fillings you have. The cost price of the drink is 19p. (And these cost prices include all overheads such as staff and electricity). So the maximum cost price of the "free" sub and drink is 77p. They're charging you £1.09 upwards for the drink alone, so they're still well into the profit zone.

Hence I won't be losing any sleep about using these stamps off Ebay.

An important tip if you are going to buy them is to ensure you buy the red stamps, as these are 2006 issues. If they are purple or any other colour, they are from previous years and the branch may not accept them. Some of the sellers don't mention what colour the stamps are. If this is the case, ask the seller if they are red before you bid.

bluep

The other thing to consider is that if you have a local subway (i.e. near work) that you use and you are forever going in wiht stamped cards for freebies, won't they wonder at some stage which subway you are buying all the real stuff from to get all the stamps?

Subway tastes evil anyhows.

Miroslav

Apologies for bringing this back up, but my local subway now has a sign up stating people must use there stamps by a date in June (I forget which).

Is this a national thing, or just my local? And does anyone think this is because of auctions like the OP mentioned?

Miroslav

Just done a google search - this is from an American site, but I guess it's global.....

Subway Ends Free-Sandwich Promotion Jun 2, 2005 5:29 pm US/Eastern MILFORD, Conn. The Subway restaurant chain said Thursday it is ending its decades-old free sandwich promotion, amid concerns that counterfeiters have been creating and selling copies of the restaurant's proof-of-purchase stamps and cards. Subway, which operates more than 23,000 restaurants in 82 countries, joins a growing list of businesses _ from pharmaceutical companies and cigarette manufacturers to recording studios and clothing designers _ who say counterfeiters have hurt their bottom line. Under the Sub Club promotion, which had run in some form since the 1980s, customers received a stamp for every six-inch sandwich they bought. A full card of eight stamps could be redeemed for a free sandwich. But thousands of stamps are for sale at online auction sites and company officials said franchise owners were increasingly discovering counterfeit stamps. "It's possible some of the stamps got by and we didn't even know," said company spokesman Kevin Kane. "It's possible we don't even know the extent of it." Bud Miller, executive director of the Virginia-based Coupon Information Center, said coupon fraud exploded in 2003 as counterfeiters used high-quality printers and online auction sites to distribute millions of dollars in false coupons from companies across the country. Grocers nationwide have struggled to spot fake coupons, which can be quite sophisticated or as simple as an altered expiration date. Some grocery stores have stopped accepting coupons printed from home after manufacturers refused to honor counterfeits. Miller said the situation is improving because retailers are getting better at spotting counterfeits and federal agents are cracking down on sophisticated scams. "Somebody doing one counterfeit is not going to bankrupt the system, but somebody doing thousands of these and e-mailing them out, that's where you get the problem." In Missouri last year, FBI agents arrested a man who sold thousands of dollars worth of bogus Applebees gift certificates online. He received five months in prison. The U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation last month that would strengthen anti-counterfeiting laws. The bill would require the destruction of equipment used to make counterfeit goods. Currently, pirated products are destroyed but the equipment is untouched, allowing more counterfeiting. Subway is a privately held company, owned by Milford, Conn.-based Doctor's Associates Inc. Company sales in 2003 were $6.8 billion. The company is designing a promotion to replace the Sub Club cards. Each Subway restaurant can set its own timeframe, but the promotion will be phased out companywide by Oct. 1, Kane said. He said the company had been considering whether the promotion was outdated for some time. When company officials discovered rolls of stamps available online, Kane said, it sealed the promotion's fate. "All that effort and you're getting free subs," Kane said. "It wasn't a cruise. It wasn't a trip to the Bahamas. You're getting free subs." Bill DeCarlo, who was eating at a Subway in Newington on Thursday afternoon, says he fills up cards several times a year. But he says the decision to discontinue the stamps won't cause him to go elsewhere for lunch. "It's their choice, it's their business," said DeCarlo, an accountant from New Haven. "It probably generates more business for them, but maybe not if they're getting rid of it."

essexhoney

Back when i was a teenager i worked in our local subway. All the stamps have individual numbers on them so the ones that are stolen they will know when they are used so my advice to anyone buying these off of ebay is dont fill your details in on the card (you dont have to) or if they do request you to dont use your real details.
The amount of money subway make they are not losing a great deal where they charge you over a pound for a small drink they are actually only charging you for the cup you drink it out of as the drinks cost them practically pence! so for a cup that costs around 15p to make they are making plenty of profit. as for the fillings for the subs they buy in huge amounts of bulk. 1 tin of tuna for example costs them around £4 and it makes near on 200 6" subs at an average on £2.69 each you do the maths