A company called CashStar claims to have figured out how to make online only gift cards work well and says they will be 30% of all gift cards within five years. Makes me wonder though, will online gift card be easier to lose than real ones? (article)

You’ve got to give it to AMEX to show us how it is done. They are offering select card holders (read, risky card holders) a $300 gift card if they fully pay off their account. Once they receive their gift card their account will be closed.

Behold the proper use of the carrot methodology. (article)

As part of a settlement agreement, Subway is giving away 142,500 $2 gift cards. Really, TWO DOLLARS? Seems Subway is smart in the ways of gift cards and knows people have little reason to carry a card around with that little on it on the off chance they might be passing a Subway. And if someone does use the card, they are bound to buy more than $2 worth of goods. Nice move Subway!

And from the most obscure thing to buy a gift card for, Michigan now sells gift cards for hunting licenses. However, you can’t use them in places that actually sell licenses, only online.

Hernando County (FL) Commissioner Jim Adkins is proposing a program where people who purchase a foreclosed upon home will receive up to $5,000 in gift cards as an incentive. Huh? Does he really think that offering gift cards instead of cash will pull more people to take advantage of the program? Perhaps he should talk to the attorney who received $125,000 in $10 gift cards as his fee (below). (article)

Update 5/15/09: Alas, the judges ruling was overturned and a higher court ordered the attorney to receive his fee in cash. (article)

After settling a semi-frivolous lawsuit, a retailer (defendant) chose to pay the attorneys part of the settlement ($125,000) $10 gift cards. That is, they gave him 12,500 $10 gift cards. The judge upheld the payment. (article)  Unfortunately the decision was later overturned and the retailer had to pay the attorneys with real money.

Does anyone really need an iPhone app made specifically for purchasing gift cards? GiftCertificates.com launched just such an app recently. (story)

Quoted in this article, consumers union recommends that people avoid giving gift cards this holiday season.

Is this where the industry is heading? Sorry, we ate up all your card value with fees but as a consolation your worthless gift card is a camera worse than the one on your phone.

A recent article (Old Gift Cards are in Season, WSJ 10/22/08) in the Wall Street Journal places the blame for gift card breakage partially on consumers shoulders for their bad habit of waiting or forgetting to use their gift cards. While I agree that this behavior is clearly common among consumers, I think it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding by consumers in thinking that their gift cards will continue to hold value indefinitely. Perhaps we just think it would be the reasonable thing to do.

The article also notes a trend where consumers are digging deep looking for old gift cards to use up and how this is good news for retailers. While most retailers wait to book profit on sales from gift cards until they are redeemed, they do eventually benefit from unused gift cards when they claim unused balances as breakage.

However, while retailers may benefit when gift cards are used because they can claim profit, they also benefit from the cash flow that unused gift cards provide them. When older gift cards are used, retailers may be able to book a profit, but they don’t get the cash flow from a non-gift card purchase.

The real news is the lack of news. Since I’ve started paying attention to all things gift cards, the general economic meltdown has sucked all the oxygen out of a lot of other news and there has been very little interesting to report lately. Seems people don’t care about their last few bucks on a gift card when their 401k has gotten a serious haircut.

If you find any interesting gift-card related tidbits (and I’m not talking about how Costco is selling Starbucks gift cards 20% off … we’re not that kind of gift card site) please send them our way.

Just trying to spread the word so more people can find this useful information.

Find me on MySpace and be my friend!

Here I am on Facebook

I now count 28 sites on our list of gift card buy/sell/trade/swap/transfer sites.

Apparently Buy.com had a software glitch in its POS software such that for a while when people payed partly with a gift card and partly with a credit card, it never charged the credit card. So it is charging them now, one or more years later. (article)

I guess you snooze you lose isn’t a legal doctrine.

I can’t make this up:

“According to a new survey from the National Research Network, the perception that gift cards are impersonal is the top inhibitor for consumers purchasing gift cards …” (article here).

With over $90 Billion in US gift card sales last year, the industry doesn’t seem very inhibited. As a matter of fact, lots of people I know LIKE the fact that they are anonymous.

I found this post today regarding a service now being offered to collect used gift cards so that they can be recycled and turned into new gift cards. Seems to me the missing step is actually being able to completely use up your gift card before the service fees eat it alive or you just simply give up on it.

Thanks for visiting giftcardadvocate.org. From my own difficulties using gift cards, I have done and continue to do a lot of research into how they work, the legal options for gift card related problems, options for gift card holders, and the industry in general. This site came out of my desire to share the information I found out and to help create more solutions for gift card users.