A gift card instead of cash

[Jazzy]

What is it really saying when someone gives you a gift card instead of cash?

 

[Lamb]

It says I bought this gift card from a place I know you like to shop and I don't know what you have from that store already. I have a lot of craft items and it's hard for anyone to know what supplies I might need. Getting a JoAnn Fabrics gift card is really exciting for me!

 

[tango]

It says I bought this gift card from a place I know you like to shop and I don't know what you have from that store already. I have a lot of craft items and it's hard for anyone to know what supplies I might need. Getting a JoAnn Fabrics gift card is really exciting for me!

It certainly implies a little more thought than giving cash although cash is better in so many ways. It works anywhere, isn't subject to terms and conditions, doesn't stop working if the store goes out of business, and can't be hacked the way gift cards often can.

As a teenager it was tedious to get a $10 gift card from one store and a $10 gift card from a different store, meaning I couldn't get the $20 item I wanted from either store without putting up the extra $10 myself, which I didn't necessarily have. Your JoAnn Fabrics gift card lets you go and have some fun in the store, but does it offer you anything in the store that an identical amount of cash wouldn't have?

As a giver, a gift card does make it easy to work with sums that don't fit neatly into bank note multiples. $25 in cash means two notes but works as a single gift card.

The main time I buy gift cards is around this time of year. A couple of the brewpubs my wife and I enjoy visiting often do deals where if you buy a $50 card you get a free $15 card or similar, so we buy cards to use throughout the year. If a place is willing to give me 30% extra money for free if I buy their gift cards I'm a lot more interested than if they offer me the chance to turn $50 that I could spend anywhere into $50 I can only spend there subject to terms and conditions.

When places do that, getting a gift card could mean that I got something for free and thought you might like it. I wonder how people who object to the idea of regifting would feel about that.

 

[ValleyGal]

I got a $100 gift card once and was really excited about going to spend it, but when I got to the store, it turned out to either have been hacked or not loaded properly. I did not have the heart to tell the giver that I had to spend my own money and tell them it was a gift from them, but I was very angry that I now had to go and spend that much money of my own, that I didn't have back then. It took a lot of sacrifice on my part.

And they do get hacked. I don't know how they do it, but the hackers put a new bar code over top of the card bar code, and when you spend your money, it then loads THEIR card and you end up giving an empty card to some unsuspecting recipient who then goes through what I just described above.

Remedy: If you are local to the recipient, give cash. If you are not local and want to give them money, send them an etransfer or have the gift certificate emailed to them (like Amazon does). Don't trust cards!

 

[tango]

I got a $100 gift card once and was really excited about going to spend it, but when I got to the store, it turned out to either have been hacked or not loaded properly. I did not have the heart to tell the giver that I had to spend my own money and tell them it was a gift from them, but I was very angry that I now had to go and spend that much money of my own, that I didn't have back then. It took a lot of sacrifice on my part.

And they do get hacked. I don't know how they do it, but the hackers put a new bar code over top of the card bar code, and when you spend your money, it then loads THEIR card and you end up giving an empty card to some unsuspecting recipient who then goes through what I just described above.

Remedy: If you are local to the recipient, give cash. If you are not local and want to give them money, send them an etransfer or have the gift certificate emailed to them (like Amazon does). Don't trust cards!

It's pretty easy to hack the cards, if you're so inclined. If you take a few gift cards from the store the chances are they won't stop you because they aren't worth anything. Then scratch the strip off the back and note the code underneath. Put a replacement scratch strip on, and put the card back in the store.

Now when someone buys that card and loads it, you have all the details to spend the money they intended to give someone else.

It can be tricky to protect against that happening - basically if you're going to buy a gift card make sure it doesn't look like it has been tampered with in any way. Or just give cash and be done with it.

If they put a sticker over the bar code they would have to spend the money before the intended recipient did because the gift card would look like the scammer's card. That's not difficult in the run-up to a time like Christmas but I don't imagine a scammer would want to find they did everything to pull off a scam only to find someone bought a gift card, decided to keep it for themselves, and landed all the scammer's ill-gotten gains on it.

 

[Jason76]

It might be my age, but I lose cash so much. Embarrassing to lose $15 the other day.

 

[Lamb]

It might be my age, but I lose cash so much. Embarrassing to lose $15 the other day.

Lucky is the guy who walks behind you to find that cash!

 

[Jason76]

Lucky is the guy who walks behind you to find that cash!

I think it was stolen.