pre paid debt card

bagpuss38

Hi all,
Not sure where to post this but anyhoo.

Every year for x mas i have bought love to shop vouchers for my daughter through park.
This year however she has found them quite hard to spend as the number of shops that accept them arent great.
I had considered getting a pre paid debt card and loading it with money throughout the year and she could use that instead.
Any advice or pointers please?

claire16c

Is there any reason why you cant just put it in a savings account and earn interest on it, rather than giving it to a company who could go bust, or a card you could loose, have problems using etc? Then just put the money in her account at Christmas.

Ive read on another thread on here today about the problems people are having using a pre paid visa card.

whitewing

The prepaid Visa card has a fee of (I think) £2 something - that has put me off getting them.

lovesabargain123

How old is your daughter?

The Halifax (as I'm sure most banks do) have an account where they can have a debit card (think its electron) from 11yrs.. If your daughter is that age then I would suggest opening her an account, putting x amount per month in and giving her the card for Xmas
X

sweetilemon

I looked at these before christmas, did a post search on here and read some pretty bad reviews! Not only do they charge you £27.95 for a £25 card but there was hidden charges all over the place. I would avoid them and go with the bank account idea or cash/cheque!

sweetilemon

Did u see jemb's post about her experience?

persa

If you're buying vouchers at face value, you're not hiding the cost of the gift, all you're doing (as you've discovered) is restricting the recipient's options.

If the real issue is about having something to physically hand over, why not make your own gift certificate (I bet the people on the Special Occasions board - currently renamed the Christmas board - would be delighted to help)? You can put details of the amount you've transferred, the date and the payment reference used. (You can do this in advance - you should be able to set a date for a one off payment well in advance, rather than having to wire cash on a particular day itself.)

Many people (my OH sadly included) believe that gift vouchers are more personal than cash. I'll never understand why...

If you must buy vouchers, buy them from a fairly solid company like John Lewis or M&S. It would be awful if the company you bought vouchers for was to collapse.