There are people who are willing to plunk down $7 for a cup of coffee every day at Starbucks, or those who carve out decent slice of their budgets to ensure they get a venti latte with all the syrupy extras on a constant basis, so the idea of spending $450 on a shiny new steel Starbucks gift card really isn’t that much of a leap. And it will come with the cachet of being one of only 5,000 in existence. We can just sense the caffeinated drool out there right now. [More]
gift cards
Sorry, You Can’t Buy Nexus Devices With Your $350 Google Play Store Credit
By 11.19.12
Michael’s plan seemed like a really great idea at the time he hatched it. He wanted to make sure that he would have the money for a Nexus 4 set aside, so he purchased $350 worth of credit for the Google Play store. The phone’s available for sale there, so this made perfect sense. Until the phone actually launched. When he could finally get through to place his order, he learned that Play Store credit specifically couldn’t be used on Nexus devices. Oh, no. [More]
If You’re Going To Give Gift Cards, Consider Store-Branded Cards First
By 11.12.12
Gift cards have become an easy way to tell your family and friends, “I believe you merit a gift this holiday season but I would rather you just pick it out yourself.” But some cards have historically been bogged down with fees that chew away at the cards’ value until they are worth less than the plastic on which they’re printed. According to a new survey, your best bet at finding a fee-free gift card is to buy store-branded plastic. [More]
If Staples Never Had Any Hard Drives In Stock, Were They Ever Really On Sale?
By 10.11.12
Jordan had two glorious things happening to him at the same time. He had a $220 gift card to Staples, and the office-supply chain had Kingston solid State drives on sale for the wonderfully cheap price of $79.99. They were marked down from $199.99. He headed to his local store to take advantage of the deal, since Staples.com wouldn’t let him use the gift cards. At Staples, he learned that while his local store had the the item on display, they didn’t actually have them in stock. Now he’s questioning reality: was the item on sale last week or this week? Did the sale really ever exist? Was the lack of stock an accidental bait-and-switch move? (If it were an intentional one, they’d push the drives on customers for $200, or try to sell them a cheaper but inferior model.) Why won’t the web site accept gift cards? [More]
Help! My Target Gift Card Has Gone Missing
By 8.2.12
For the month of August, consumer advocate Christopher Elliott will occasionally be sharing some of the questions and problems he receives from readers. In this case, Robert is trying without much luck to track down the Target gift card he ordered for his grandson — and finding out that Target isn’t obligated to deliver that card in a timely fashion. Can anyone help him find it? [More]
Don’t Try To Sell Your Target Gift Card For Cash Inside The Store
By 7.3.12
When Heather tried to sell her son’s old crib, she learned that it had been recalled and contacted the retailer, Target, to find out how to get a refund. She was told that if she brought the crib to a Target store, she would receive a refund on the spot. What she wasn’t told is that the refund would be in the form of a Target gift card. With the nearest store an hour away, she doesn’t visit regularly and has no use for a gift card. She’s on a tight budget and has more use for cash. She tried to find a fellow customer to buy it from her until store management asked her to stop. From their point of view, she brought in a recalled item without understanding Target’s policies, and was soliciting customers inside the store, attempting to sell her gift card for cash. [More]
Target Feels Need To Brag About Selling Gift Cards At Face Value
By 5.23.12
Hey, who doesn’t love gift cards? Target sells a few as impulse items at the checkout, and Reader Cheryl noticed something curious. The gift cards had the same “as advertised” tag that sale flyer items at Target get, but they weren’t on sale. They were being sold at face value. As gift cards generally are. [More]
Ordering Appliance At Lowe's Results In Cascade Of Incompetence
By 5.2.12
The employees at his local Lowe’s store were pretty great, reader Tony tells us, but ordering his stove online with multiple store gift cards wasn’t such a good idea. When he hit “Submit,” the order didn’t go through, and the Lowe’s customer service buffoons weren’t able to tell him what had happened. A visit to the local store resolved the situation, resulting in the actual delivery of the stove. Which was damaged. [More]
Not Everyone At Costco Understands Secret Membership Avoidance Strategy
By 4.13.12
A few years ago, we ran a post about the secret and kind of awesome way to do some shopping at Costco without purchasing a membership. Just give a member you know some cash and have them pick up a gift card (Costco Cash Card) for you. Great system if your nearest Costco is far away, or you just don’t go often enough to justify joining. In theory, anyway. Justin took the advice in our post, but was turned away at the door by an employee who wasn’t aware that a cash card entitled him to enter the store. [More]
American Express Pulls Gift Cards From New Jersey Stores
By 4.2.12
A new regulation in New Jersey will require sellers of gift cards to record the ZIP code of everyone who buys a card, because the state thinks a revision to its unclaimed property laws allow it to claim the value of any unredeemed gift cards after two years. So rather than deal with all the possible hassles involved with this change, American Express has simply pulled all its gift cards from retail locations in the Garden State. [More]
Judge Certifies Class-Action Status For Abercrombie & Fitch Gift Card Lawsuit
By 3.15.12
Abercrombie & Fitch could soon learn a huge lesson in bad marketing practices. A federal judge has given the go-ahead to a class-action lawsuit against the retailer that alleges it handed out gift cards with no expiration date only to later tell customers that their cards had expired. [More]
Scammers Hit Grocery Store Gift Card Kiosk, Swap Out Empty Cards For New Ones
By 3.1.12
Jeff is a really generous boss. This past holiday season, he gave out $100 gift cards to various stores as gifts to his staff. He picked them up at one of those gift card malls that you see in grocery and drug stores: in this case, at grocery chain Ralph’s. When his employee went to actually use the card this week, it wouldn’t work. Normal gift card snafu? No. The grocery store blames card-switching thieves. [More]
Adventures In Honesty: Chase Credit Card Rewards
By 2.9.12
Zach’s parents used their Chase rewards points to send him a nice gift. He was thrilled to find three $25 gift cards to Amazon! Except, um, they had only sent him one. It was obviously a mailing error, and Zach reached out to Chase to straighten it out. Having a customer call in to complain that he received too many gift cards was apparently an unprecedented event at this Chase call center. But for raising an honest son, Chase will reward his parents with extra points. [More]
Don't Bother Getting A Kindle Fire Unless You Have A Credit Card
By 1.13.12
Heather really likes her new Kindle Fire, once she got it working, but she’s sending it back. Why would she do that? Because the Fire isn’t a very fun device without Amazon Prime, and you need to have a credit card to sign up for Prime. She doesn’t have any credit cards, and she doesn’t want any. So back the Kindle goes. [More]
Chipotle Understands When Your Dog Eats Your Gift Card
By 1.11.12
John’s greyhound has no patience. If the dog had waited just a little while, the Chipotle gift card in a paper sleeve that his fianc√©e left on the kitchen table would have been magically transformed into food. But dogs don’t think that way, and this dog really, really likes to chew up paper. And so the $50 gift card was destroyed. [More]
$2 Billion In Gift Cards Will Go Unused This Year
By 1.6.12
If you received gifts this last holiday season, there’s a good chance at least one of them was a gift card. But while the cards are an easy way to give someone a gift other than cash or socks, a number of people just aren’t getting around to spending the money on those cards in a timely manner. [More]
If CVS Sells You Something Expired, It's Your Own Damn Fault
By 1.6.12
Reader Andy noticed this sign in near the breakfast foods in a local CVS. It instructs customers to check the expiration dates of the items they choose before taking them up to the cash register. It’s an innovative idea: maybe they’re aiming to crowdsource stock rotation. [More]
CVS Sells Customer Expired Prepaid Debit Card, Shrugs
By 1.5.12
Last year, Mike bought a Vanilla Visa prepaid debit card at CVS as a gift for a friend, who promptly forgot that the card existed until about a year later. The card doesn’t work, but not because it’s been dormant for the last year and had its balance eaten up in fees. No, the problem is that this card expired in July 2010, before it was even purchased. CVS never should have sold him this card. Now neither CVS nor Vanilla Visa will take responsibility for the problem, and are even accusing Mike of being a scammer. [More]
