Gift cards make great stocking stuffers — just as long as you don’t stuff them in a drawer and forget about them after the holidays.
Americans are expected to spend nearly $30 billion on gift cards this holiday season, according to the National Retail Federation. Restaurant gift cards are the most popular, making up one-third of those sales.
Most of those gift cards will be redeemed. Paytronix, which tracks restaurant gift card sales, says around 70% of gift cards are used within six months.
But many cards — tens of billions of dollars’ worth — wind up forgotten or otherwise unused. That’s when the life of a gift card gets more complicated, with expiration dates or inactivity fees that can vary by state.
Holy shit the US has some consumer protection we don’t have over here (at least in the UK)
A legally enforceable 5y minimum expiration for a gift card is a fucking great idea.
In Canada they never expire unless the store goes out of business. There’s a few exceptions for things that are services rather than freely spent balance but yeah, to me it seems unfair that they would be able to just absorb that money.
Realistically they get really fucking annoying to keep on your books longer than that anyways.
You’ve got this weird accumulating liability account just sitting there until they expire or you can write them off.
For sure, but I had an “expires in 6 months” gift card for a restaurant over here a year ago. Could have done with not feeling forced to squeeze it in-between existing plans
That’s short.
Starbucks stars have actually got me to stop buying their product. I get an email saying my stars expire, but not how many, after 12 months and gave up on it
Six months seems downright criminal, especially if it’s to a small restaurant. Two years should be the absolute minimum.
Uh, what? Are you defending companies stealing gift card money from people because it’s a “weird account on the books”?
No, but also yes.
5 years is an annoyingly long time to track gift cards because you can’t spend that money until it’s no longer a liability on your books. 1 year is way too short, there needs to be a compromise somewhere, 5 years is probably fair.
Oh noo, my business has thousands of dollars bearing interest for half a decade whatever will I do
Starbucks makes nearly as much off interest from their gift card accounts as they do actually selling products. It accounts for 155m of revenue annually.
Do they actually? I didn’t know that.
Uhm, don’t have a concrete source here but AFAIK in the EU gift cards that have been bought by paying money into them are not allowed to expire, and I would have thought the UK has similar laws.
Coupons from magazines are not something anyone spent money on so they can have expiry dates.