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Gift cards are a scam! If only they let people cash them out.

maybe if people weren't idiots and actually used the gift cards after they got them, they wouldnt go bad... what i'm wondering about is how much of that is cards that were used but only have like 3 cents left on them...

I believe in california it's a law that you can't make gift cards expire. I'm sure it's due to ***** like this. Best Buy has some really ***** tactics nowadays. I haven't shopped there in a while because of it.

It's not that they are expired, it's that Best Buy figures if someone hasn't used a two year old gift card then they are never going to use it.

I used to hold onto my gift cards but now I redeem them right away since I'm afraid of making it $43,000,025.00 for the year.

If you get a gift card you don't like, find someone who shops at the store and sell it to them like 5$ off. Or ebay it. It's really not that big of a deal. A gift card says "I put thought into your gift, I didn't just go damn, 'X' needs a gift, heres 20$"

Except in RI. Gift cards are not legally allowed to expire here.

I'm not sure if this goes for all the Barnes and Nobles, but the one I shop at if you use a giftcard and it goes under $5 and there is still money left on it, they give you the remaining balance back in cash. Wish all/more places were like that.

In Ontario, Canada they are (supposedly) introducing legislation to ban expiry dates on gift cards. unfortunately they may be lying (they do it quite a lot)

a fool and his money should most definitely be parted...

The only ones losing money here are the idiots buying them. Give me legal tender and not some piece of ***** prepaid card; the last thing I want is to be limited to spending my time and resources at one company, especially BB.

Cash is a gift card to any store in the world :)

@simpleid
The raw gift cards are worthless. They have to be 'loaded' and have funds added to them. Your premise makes no sense...

Gift cards should never expire. Let's put pressure on BB to make it so.

Nice digg - I was wondering how much these companies were milking off of gift cards. Well this clarifies it a bit.

It's actually very interesting. Obviously there's going to be a certain amount of gift cards that are simply lost, accidentally destroyed or discarded, etc. That fraction ought to be fairly predictable. Most states prohibit gift cards from expiring these days, but that just means that the retailer develops a nest egg that collects interest for them. And, generally after a certain statutory time limit, they will ultimately receive the balance of the unclaimed cards.

It's free money. It's just like the money the IRS collects on interest in overpayment of taxes that they refund the principle on each year. If only they could boost your withholding, they could collect more money while not changing the amount you are finally taxed...

These are really great schemes if you can get in on the ground-floor.

I worked at a big box store for a bit, for xmas they gave us all gift card instead of a real bonus, so we all went around trying to find something to buy that would leave 10 cents or so on the card. This was before they started charging a fee if you didn't use your card after one year. The minute you buy a card it's recorded as a sale for that store. Also don't ever put a large amount of money on a gift card. Some stores will tell you to put $3000=$10000 dollars on a card if your doing a big project, what they don't tell you is that a whoever holds the gift card can use it, you can't report it lost or stolen, even if you know the number, the money is just gone! So remember cash is King!

I say everybody who has been hoarding these cards make a run on Best Buy today, that'll take the smirk off the big wigs' faces.

Either that, or you can just mail me your card. I could use some new electronic gizmos. 8-P

speaking of gift cards... has anyone else seen the mp3 player/ gift card target is selling...

For the first time in my life I actually would very much appreciate gift cards from people this Christmas. Most presents people buy I don't really want, while cash is both a bit insincere and also it just gets dropped in the joint bank account where I never end up buying anything for myself.

This just in,

Las Vegas hookers initiate a new gift card program starting as low as $10 for a handjob!

bestbuy can thank blackhawk marketing.

Off topic, I know, but I'm actually sort of done with Best Buy. Is that allowed? Does that qualify as electronics blasphemy? I've bought a ton of stuff from them over the years, but we recently bought a new TV from Bestbuy.com and the NIGHTMARE we had to go through to get a customer service person on this continent who was intelligible (communication gets complicated when coupled with accents AND bad international phone connections) was obscene. When you call customer service, they just park your call in Bangalore or wherever and hope you get frustrated and give up.

They did offer us compensation for our inconvenience (eventually) via, you guessed it... gift cards. Thanks, guys.

Why do "feelings" trump practicality? I work all day and all night. I don't have time to go shopping for you. Gift cards are great because I know you like to go this store and they cut shopping time down to a minimum. Go in the store, grab the gift card, boom you're done. No carrying mountains of packages to the car, etc. etc. But then someone's feelings are hurt because I "didn't spend time shopping for them." WTF??? Did I not go to the store, drive around for 44 mins looking for parking, walk 15 mins to the store, find the gift card and then wait in line for 30 mins to pay for the thing, not to mention sitting in traffic for the next 30 mins trying to get out of the parking lot? That's practically 2 hours right there. I gave you 2 hours of my time and that's not "caring enough?" Maybe it's the gift receiver who is selfish to ask for a monopoly of my time to get them somethign other than a gift card so they won't feel slighted. Unfortunately I have things to do, like earn the money that allows me to buy you ANYTHING AT ALL.

While I think gift cards are stupid ways for store to get your money, if someone is stupid enough to forget about using it then its their fault.

However i wonder how many of those are "lost" if you lose it you can't get another one (even though they have it in their system....).

I find their pricing utterly annoying. I'm talking about posting the price of a product with a mention of a rebate in fine print. The extra work involved to get the rebate is not worth my business. I can wait a few days and order stuff from sites like newegg for less than BB's 'after rebate' price.

Adam Carolla ranting about gift cards:
http://odeo.com/audio/3049953/play

About two years ago I "discovered" some Best Buy gift certificates that I had lost, misplaced, whatever (yes, certificates, not cards). I called customer service to find out if I could use them, the short answer was "No", but if I sent them the certificates, I would be issued gift cards for the same amount. I did that and received the gift cards a few weeks later.

I have a lot of complaints about Best Buy, but their gift card policy has not been an issue for me.

I have read a lot of people commenting that if they gave cash, it would be spent towards bills or this or that, and I can't seem to understand why that matters. If I receive $50 in cash as opposed to a gift card and blow the money on my bills as opposed to a gift, that means I still have $50 in my account to spend on myself in the future, likely at an online retailer where I can get a better deal. Personal finances is not a large corporation where the money for one sector doesnt affect the spending of another. Instead, my personal money is directly related to my expenses, so if I get $50 and get to spend it on bills, woohoo, thats $50 bucks more I keep from my paycheck/goes towards student loans/a new tv.

It's a similar idea as driving across town to get a $30 item for $15 but not across town to get a $500 item for $485. You spend just as much time for the same amount of savings, even if the % savings differs. The point is that the $ has an equal value regardless of where its coming from or being used. Or maybe its just me

To cash out a gift card:

1. Purchase something.
2. Come back next day, return it.
3. Profit.


/may not work in all stores, but should work in majority.

There are alway American Express and Visa gift cards... you can use them anywhere.

Why not just use the gift card? Just a thought. In case you didn't know, they work just like cash at the store where the card came from.

Not surprising. I used to work at Home Depot and there was a statistic that only 70% of gift cards purchased/store credit issued (which work the same as gift cards) are actually redeemed. That's 30% pure profit for nothin'.

I think it's wrong that they depreciate/expire. If anything, I think the value should appreciate to account for inflation!

How is $4.8 billion 6% of $24.8 billion ? Was that meant to read "$1.48 billion of this year's gift cards will go unused"?

id rather get cash and use it on food and gas then stupid candles or clothes I'll never wear or some knick knack that will most likely never leave the box much less get used. I've tried to talk my parents into canceling xmas for years, but to no avail. I'd rather we all pool our money and spend it on some fantastic dinner with some wine and enjoy the company of the family as opposed to dealing with the malls and stores and retarded masses that flood them both.

Money is the assholes gift.

You give money because you are saying "Look, I am supposed to give you something, but I your not worth the effort for me to actually figure out what you need or want"

Money is forgotten. Some could say that about giftcards, but a giftcard ensures that the person expends the money in some fashion or another on something they may never had bought. In other words, give a friend $20 and its can end up as a pizza, electric bill, etc. A gift card might actually close them in on that item they want but cannot justify buying. Thats makes it much more appealing that just cash.

Besides, if you don't what store to buy them a gift card from then just why in the hell are you giving them anything but a regulard Christmas card? Out of guilt? You obviously don't know them well enough or worse, don't care to put the effort into finding out what they might actually want.

They made this illegal in Washington. The gift cards are required by law to never expire so Best Buy and other stores can't do this.

Gift cards seem like a cop-out gift for people whose interests/tastes you don't know. I think it is more fun to get these people a gift that you like, or feel they should be exposed to, and include a gift reciept. If they don't like it they can exchange it but otherwise they may enjoy something they would not have experienced otherwise. At least the store isn't getting money for nothing.

Some of you need to learn the spirit of Christmas.

The headline and the article are misleading. GAAP don't allow U.S. corporations to report gift card money as actual revenue until the funds are actually used by consumers. What the corporations can [and usually] do is accrue interest on gift card funds, and this is how they make money off of consumers until all of the states or the federal government prohibit the expiration of gift cards and their associated balances.

So if I invest money on TV adds asking all those people who have gifts cards to send it to me if they are not going to use them, i least i can make few millions profit, hmmm........

The thing is, even if you use a gift card money will be loss.
It costs money to buy a gift card.
the longer a person keeps a gift card the lower it's value becomes.
If a person looses a gift card who hasn't the company makes money.
If you even spend a gift card you sometimes end up dollars of unspent value on those cards.
(Loss moeny for you profits for them.) If I'm down to handing out gift cards. I just give cash.

This really doesn't make sense to me. If Best Buy is about to report income this year on Gift Cards, and say 10 million dollars worth of those cards were later used, wouldn't BB then have to report those gift card usages as a loss for accounting purposes?

Wal-Mart gift cards can be bought with any major credit card. Sam's Club only accepts Discover for credit, but they do take Wal-Mart gift cards. So, if you want to use your Chase Visa at Sam's, buy the Wal-Mart gift card with it.

I know this is only a workaround for a Sam's Club policy that sucks, but it served me well recently.

For the right store, gift cards are awesome. Visa gift cards are even better.

Don't blame the giver if the receiver is too stupid to use it. Hell, sell it on ebay if you are hard up for cash.

"I don't know what accounting standards they're following, but unused gift cards do not contribute to revenue from an accounting perspective. This is even disclosed at the bottom of the article. So in that sense, the article is somewhat misleading."

Every state has what's called an Abandoned Property law that (usually) allows companies to claim unredeemed gift cards as cash after a certain amount of time has lapsed.

With that being said, most companies really love gift card programs for several reasons -- they can claim the extra interest that unredeemed cards generate as revenue which can add up to quite a bit of money over time. This is called 'float' and it's quite lucrative.

The biggest reason though is something called 'uplift' - basically you go into a store with a $20 gift card but by the time you leave you'll have spent and extra $30 on other stuff while you're there. Gift card programs are primarily extended marketing programs and they work extraordinarily well.

Also - to you babies who only want cash - most retailers will allow you to cash out your cards if you really insist on it. They're not going to make it easy for you to do this though and it's understandable why if you think about it.

Gift cards are incredibly popular gifts, so the people who think they are lame or insulting are obviously in the minority.

Cards are safe, cash isn't. But they are all the same. The excuse that you'll use cash for food or other necessities is bogus. The next time you buy yourself a little something that you pay cash for, that's the gift. I can't believe that first comment "cash isn't a gift...gift card is a legitimate gift" There's no difference.

Gift cards are not a bad thing unless they expire, much like mail-in rebates. Refusing to honor a card or mail-in rebate because of elapsed time is tantamount to theft on the part of the store/corporation.