Unused gift cards
Do you forget where you put those gift cards you received for your birthday, Christmas, etc.? Most of us put them away for “safe” keeping and sometimes never see them again, instead of putting them where we visit frequently, e.g. “cookie jar”, as a constant reminder that they DO exist. Unused gift cards add up to billions of dollars a year and guess who gets the benefit?
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Partially used gift cards presents another problem (scam?). They could be for as little as a couple of dollars and may not be worth your trouble or expense to use it, especially if it’s a restaurant, etc. you don’t frequent often. You don’t want to spend a lot of money just to use a gift card with a balance of a few dollars, not to mention the gas to get there at $3.50 a gallon. Again, who benefits from all these small balances that are never used? Maybe we should stick to cash as gifts with a stipulation on the greeting card that we promise to use it for our personal pampering and not for general household use. Cash will never be put somewhere and get lost. It will be put in with our other cash, never getting into the hands of gift card issuers. However, to be sure we use the cash for the purpose intended, we have that greeting card asking us to ”promise”. Of course, the card asking you to promise will probably get lost!!!
Otiginally published September 2014
