Big retailers are making a lot of easy money from unredeemed gift cards.

People lose them. People forget about them. People take them to the store only to discover that the expiry date has passed. People don’t spend them all the way down because there is nothing in the store for $12.62.

And where does all that extra money go? Into the pockets of big retailers. For them, it’s money for nothing. Aunt Betty’s Christmas wish to little Johnny, be damned.

The Aunt Betty’s of this typist’s youth gave money in the card. Cold hard cash. And we loved it because we could do with it what we pleased. Sometimes we even put it in the bank.

But with a gift card you only have one place to spend it and you’d better spend it before the expiry date is out. (Unless you live in places that have banned expiry dates on gift cards.)

Don’t get sucked in this Christmas. Give the gift of cold hard cash. Big rip off retailers, be damned.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 9:04 am and is filed under culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.