New law in CT - No more experiation dates on Gift Cards.

[Kimberle]

State just passed this new law! Companies must honnor the FULL value of any gift card issued in CT purchased after 8/15/03.

Companies can no longer de-value them!!

 

[ThreeCircles]

Wow! Sounds like a great law to me! I hope it expands to the whole U.S.

I think it is SOOOOO cheap for companies to de-value gift cards as time goes on. Who ever heard of such a thing! I've often opted out of buying gift cards from certain companies for that very reason.

Thanks for the info!

 

[KathyTX]

The flip side of this is that there is some administration and systems cost to maintain the gift card information indefinitely...

Say you buy a $10 gift card and don't use it for 20 years. That's 20 years that the company has kept the GC information current, in an ever-growing database of "stale" gift cards.

I agree that gift cards should not expire. But I do see some that have a small annual service fee attached after some long period of time. (For instance, $1 per year charged against the card after 2 years.) This covers the cost of administration, and ensures that a company does not carry the liability of an uncashed gift card indefinitely. This does seem reasonable to me.

 

[Kimberle]

Kathy -

I'm an Accountant & have worked in Retail Accounting. Believe me, it's really not a "big" deal, accounting wise to keep the cards open. After so many years, you have a very slim chance that it will ever be used. The companies just keep "stats" and reserve for a portion of the outstanding funds. It's not kept on a "card by card" basis.

 

[Towncrier]

The fact that the retail store is holding your money and not paying you interest should provide them with enough income to keep the cards active indefinitely.

 

[tkyes]

We just used an old Blockbuster gift card the other day. I would guess that it's 2 years old.

It was a $20 gift card, we had $3.60 left on it, and this was the first time we used it.

I'm definately going to pay more attention to the service fees on gift cards and base my decision to buy the gift cards on that.

 

[MHopkins2]

Originally posted by tkyes
We just used an old Blockbuster gift card the other day. I would guess that it's 2 years old. [snip] and this was the first time we used it.

WOW! You have some shopping restraint! When I get a gift card, it burns a hole in my pocket until I spend that baby!

 

[pumba]

I found a 25 dollar one that I purchased in 2000 and I called the Mall and lo and behold it was good.....I was thrilled......I can tell you that

 

[KathyTX]

Originally posted by Kimberle
Kathy -

I'm an Accountant & have worked in Retail Accounting. Believe me, it's really not a "big" deal, accounting wise to keep the cards open. After so many years, you have a very slim chance that it will ever be used. The companies just keep "stats" and reserve for a portion of the outstanding funds. It's not kept on a "card by card" basis.

It's probably not a big deal to the accountants, since the money's not kept in separate funds. But we must maintain databases that track each gift card by serial number, and record all of the activity on that card. Purchase date, purchase amount, each debit and credit to the card by date. And we have to keep that info in databases that are immediately accessible everywhere, all the time. It's probably more of an issue to the IT folks than to the accounting folks.

 

[Krisu]

I tried to use a CVS one last month that was probaly from last Christmas. (just found it) That's when I found out they lose their value. Nothing left on it! I'm thrilled about this law.

 

[TammyNC]

I'm glad to hear about that law, hopefully it will continue in some other States.