OT Some interesting facts about gift card | Arthritis Information

 

Well now that the Christmas buying season is now over, here is some interesting facts about gift cards bought and given at Christmas time or anytime.  Gift card purchases have gone up over 42% in the last two years.  That one in five cards have never been used which in turn lets retailers keep over 5 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR in unredeemed gift cards.  Not only that if you do not use up your gift card within a certain time period, 1 yr, 2 yrs, etc or it can even be just 6 months, the retailer can charge you, off of your gift card, service fees for keepin the card active.  You may be able to add more money to your gift card but don't ever expect that they will give you a refund of money, that you did not use, off of your gift card, retailers will tell you that it is not company policy and they will stick to their guns on this and have gotten away with it.  I try not to give gift cards because of this, this is why you have retailers pushing gift cards now aday because 1 out of 5 cards is money in their pockets.  Interesting and sad.  meme

All the ones I have looked at did disclose, you just have to read the details on the back of the card/package

Another thing about gift cards:
Did you know the ones hanging on the racks throughout the stores are not always good? What happens is people come and copy down the activation numbers. Then when you buy it and give it to someone, the thief spends it all before you can use it.
That is true thank you for bringing that up  Kathy .  Several retailers were having this problem, not only with this but other prepaid items like tracfone cards. To protect yourself never ever buy a card where the strip over the pin number is scratched off of it. This means that if you purchase the card for activating lets say time on your tracfone and someone else has the activation number they can steal your minutes. Thieves are very tricky and computer savy now adays.
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