The pros and cons of gift cards
While many people are looking for a holiday deal, many crooks are looking for a steal.
It’s tempting to buy gift cards on eBay. The website has a special section for the popular and convenient gifts, but are customers getting a deal or dud?
Users can bid on gift cards and pay less than the value. That’s why KY3 spent $100 to put the gift cards to the test. They were ripped off to the tune of $67.
They bought the cards more than two weeks ago. Some have yet to arrive in the mail and others simply didn’t work at stores.
“The $1.50 you’re going to save by doing it this route or going cheap jerseys to Walmart and buying it on your own, is it worth it? To take that risk for the $1.50? I don’t think so,” said Jon Anfinson with the Better Business Bureau.
KY3 paid $25 for $30 of Kohl’s cash. That hasn’t arrived yet. The cash expired Wednesday and the store confirmed the cash won’t be honored. KY3 still has not received $30 in Toys R Us expired coupons, along with a $25 store card.
The following is a list of the pros and cons of using gift cards, as gathered by the Momseveryday team.
That full article can be read HERE
What’s so great about gift cards?
There are, of course, several benefits to gift cards. They include:They’re easy: A gift card is convenient, particularly for the folks in your life whom you don’t know personally, like teachers, babysitters or newspaper carriers. “You can save yourself a lot of guesswork by getting gift cards,” says Cathy DeWitt Dunn, a financial professional from the Dallas firm of DeWitt Dunn.
They can help you save money: Companies are pushing gift cards aggressively, so they may offer discounts when you’re buying or redeeming them, says Michael Foguth, founder of Foguth Financial Group in Brighton, Michigan. “Some large box stores will give you a percentage off your order if you throw in a gift card with a minimum set value,” he says.
Everyone wants one: They’re in high demand. Plus, they can be re gifted. “Receiving a gift card you don’t want is disappointing, but you can use that card to boost your holiday budget and re gift it, or use it as currency to buy a gift for someone on your list,” she says.
It’s a win win, right?
Not so fast.
Gift cards have a few negatives, both obvious and not so obvious.
“Many people feel that they’re impersonal and cheating on the process of deciding on, shopping for and finding, wrapping and presenting the perfect present,” she says. “If you’re someone who makes their own jam, knits their own scarves and packages their own Christmas fudge in the kitchen before hand delivering charming artisan presents, gift cards will reek of cheap ease.”
Why retailers love gift cards
Gift cards have fees that may not be immediately disclosed. For example, Dennis Tucker, a librarian from Stockton, California, noticed a $2 “maintenance fee” on his American Express gift card recently. The company refunded the fees after I asked about them.
“Certain gift cards mainly ones that act as prepaid credit cards also have an activation fee associated with them,” warns Katie Ross, an education and development manager for American Consumer Credit Counseling, an organization that offers http://www.cheapjerseys11.com/ information and guidance on issues such as identity theft, credit, debt and budgeting.
“This makes the gift seem less valuable and can leave the recipient feeling annoyed.”
Also, gift cards can get lost, and if they do, your money’s more or less gone. About $1 billion worth of gift cards aren’t redeemed every year, a fact companies know.
That’s why they love gift cards. It’s lost and found money.
Thieves love them, too
Perhaps the most unpublicized gift card drawback is the rampant abuse, which happens on several levels. Not a week goes by that I don’t hear from someone who tried to use a gift card either purchased under questionable circumstances or who claimed a gift card credit was stolen, only to be resold under equally questionable circumstances.
Gift cards are favored by hackers as financial instruments used to collect troves of loyalty points in an unethical way or by thieves who just want to steal your money. Consider what happened to Chii Biao Fong, a software engineer from Milpitas, California, after some of his Target gift card credits were presumably stolen. Target would not restore them until I asked about the loss. Others are not so lucky and lose everything.
So how do the experts do it? If you don’t have a specific, thoughtful gift in mind for that special someone in your life this holiday season, maybe you should consider doing what grandma and grandpa used to do when you were younger, says Kyle O’Dell, a managing partner at O’Dell, Winkfield, Roseman Shipp, a retirement planning firm in Denver.
“How about a good old fashioned check?” he asks. “We were never upset while growing up when our grandparents would give us cash or a check for our birthday. Hard cash or a check will get used almost all of the time.”.