According to this Sacramento Bee article, the author had a lot of trouble getting cash back for gift cards that were valued under $10, which is clearly spelled out under a California gift card law that has been in force for over two years now. This is similar to the problems with trying to use a low value Visa or MasterCard gift card at a point of sale via a split tender transaction, where you pay with two forms of payment, your low value gift card and something else. Open-loop card issuers claim that this is possible but in reality very few retail locations either allow this or have trained their clerks to be able to do this. Are you really going to take a retailer to task for not giving you back $5 when they should by law? I wish more people would, then perhaps retailers would properly educate their staff