Gift cards could be the worst present ever
By admin on November 17, 2008
We’ve all done it… You don’t know what to get for your neighbors, you ran out of time, or you simply forgot someone, so you buy a gift card. But buyer beware. In what’s becoming the Year of Bankruptcy, that gift card could be worthless by the time Christmas rolls around.
Last year, American shoppers spent 26.3 billion dollars on gift cards. And even though the current economic climate is bleak, and gift card sales (like everything else) are expected to drop, that figure will still be massive.
But with so many stores going out of business, it may be better to shove the cash you would have spent on a gift card into an envelope. If companies like Circuit City go out of business, then customers who have gift cards will have to get in line behind creditors with their hands out too. In all, experts expect gift cards to lose more than 75 million dollars this year.
And in the end, customers could get pennies on the dollar for their gift cards. So on your next shopping trip, you may want to pick up a piece of merchandise instead of a small piece of the company’s debt.
Check out more on gift cards at The Boston Globe
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