Giving any kind of gift from the heart is a nice gesture. That being said, I always preferred giving cash to gifts cards since it doesn’t restrict the recipient to one store.
Although if you know their specific interests, gift cards are a good way to encourage someone to get themselves a treat they wanted but otherwise wouldn’t have splurged on, or a good gift for those who want to shop online without having to enter payment information.
With cash, there’s the pressure to spend it on essential things like groceries, rent, transportation…if my friends and family need any of those things, I would gladly help them pay for it without obligation, but it’s not what I would choose as a gift for special occasions. Not talking about generic gift cards, but I might give them a coupon for a salon I know they frequent, or a craft or music supply store where they go for equipment.
No expiration date? In which country? I’m in Australia, I’ve worked in a couple retail stores and it’s usually a 3 year expiry for gift cards. You also have the generic visa gift cards you can purchase at supermarkets, same 3 years.
Believe it or not, in the US I haven’t seen a gift card with an expiration in probably a decade, outside of the generic visa ones draining to zero over time due to maintenance fees.
Largely because, instead of expiring,after a year or so the card would charge a monthly maintenance fee until it was empty. This was deemed unreasonable and declared problematic.
Now that’s something I’ve never seen before. I agree, it is absolutely unreasonable. I find it interesting that instead of just removing the maintenance fee you instead remove the expiry as well as the fee. I don’t understand the logic but, it is what it is I guess
Giving any kind of gift from the heart is a nice gesture. That being said, I always preferred giving cash to gifts cards since it doesn’t restrict the recipient to one store.
Although if you know their specific interests, gift cards are a good way to encourage someone to get themselves a treat they wanted but otherwise wouldn’t have splurged on, or a good gift for those who want to shop online without having to enter payment information.
With cash, there’s the pressure to spend it on essential things like groceries, rent, transportation…if my friends and family need any of those things, I would gladly help them pay for it without obligation, but it’s not what I would choose as a gift for special occasions. Not talking about generic gift cards, but I might give them a coupon for a salon I know they frequent, or a craft or music supply store where they go for equipment.
i absolutely get the underlying intention, but the bad feeling of having missed the deadline and ending up with a voided present is just awful
If you’re taking 5 years to use a gift card, that’s on you.
Most gift cards I know of have no expiration dates. Gift certificates, something from a more barbaric age, on the other hand…
No expiration date? In which country? I’m in Australia, I’ve worked in a couple retail stores and it’s usually a 3 year expiry for gift cards. You also have the generic visa gift cards you can purchase at supermarkets, same 3 years.
Believe it or not, in the US I haven’t seen a gift card with an expiration in probably a decade, outside of the generic visa ones draining to zero over time due to maintenance fees.
They can still do an expiration date, but it has to be 5 years out.
Yeah. That used to be the case in the US, but it’s illegal now.
Largely because, instead of expiring,after a year or so the card would charge a monthly maintenance fee until it was empty. This was deemed unreasonable and declared problematic.
Now that’s something I’ve never seen before. I agree, it is absolutely unreasonable. I find it interesting that instead of just removing the maintenance fee you instead remove the expiry as well as the fee. I don’t understand the logic but, it is what it is I guess