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.

|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...

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.

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.

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.

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?!"

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.

What bank?

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?

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.

Wells Fargo has done this for me, at least three different locations.

My back definitely doesn't do this, I wish it did. Consider yourself lucky!

I'm fairly sure I saw a Coinstar machine at a small casino in Vegas, and it worked fine for me (but it took a hefty commission). I'd guess the Coinstar machines at casinos are used more often than the ones in supermarkets, so they're probably a better bet. (Pun semi-intended.)

Do you not have self-service checkouts at supermarkets? They usually have a counting drop like coinstar but you just pay for your groceries so no extra charge.

Every self-service checkout I've used had a slot which takes one coin at a time. Coinstar machines let you fill a bin with a couple fistfuls of coins and count them in a minute.

Well, as I said, some self service checkouts do that as well. Coinstar probably doesnt like that though.

Are Amazon coins region-locked? The USD version is much cheaper. http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-500-Coins/dp/B0096E8CQA/ref=sr_...

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

They did pick a peculiar logo though.

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

and a peculiar name

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.

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).

US is -20. Other countries have other numbers.

It's form the Amazon fb page, so no, I don't make any money in any case.

EDIT: to be precise, Amazon uk facebook page

Cool. Thanks

No prob

Nope. It's for source tracking.

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

"What is Amazon Coins?"