Gift Cards should be banned

FaceHead

1. There is no significant benefit to consumers of gift cards existing.
2. There is clear consumer harm caused by gift cards existing (consider shops going bankrupt, losing them, unable to use in certain places, expiry, inactivity charges)
3. The harm occurs to the recipient, not the purchaser, so a regulator should intervene as there is no opportunity for the harmed to choose differently. 

Gift cards seem to exist to give companies free borrowing, without any benefit to consumers. Basically they exploit a social awkwardness in gifting cash for corporate gain. Rarely are they sold below face value. 

It may be outside of the remit of the FCA to regulate this area, in which case I'd propose to directly petition parliament. 

Thoughts? 

davidmcn

FaceHead said:

Rarely are they sold below face value. 

Think you're wrong there, they're a large part of the employee benefit sites and so on (selling at say 5-10% below the face value), or come with other freebies attached. You can probably find current examples elsewhere on this site. 

Diamandis

People clearly want to buy them and you want to petition parliament to stop them being able to buy something they want? I get that they're not better than cash and I never buy them myself. If I get one I just try and use it as quickly as possible. 

Pollycat

Martin Lewis is not a fan of gift cards.

I wouldn't ever buy them, I don't have any social awkwardness in giving cash.

I wouldn't sign a petition to ban them though.

Do you have a specific gripe that has set this off?

Have you gifted cards or received them and the company has gone under or you or the recipient have been lax enough to allow them to expire?

JamoLew

Cash is almost useless nowadays and I bet a good % of cash given to under 16s is immediately transformed into some sort of gift card associated to some electronic device/service

I think it likely that they will in fact become more common rather than less

FaceHead

davidmcn said:

FaceHead said:

Rarely are they sold below face value. 

 they're a large part of the employee benefit sites and so on (selling at say 5-10% below the face value), or come with other freebies attached. 

Hence I said 'rarely'. I agree they are sometimes sold below face value, but I would suggest that the majority of gift cards are bought as gifts, rather than as a route to a discount. From a quick Google, I couldn't find any reliable published data on the subject.   

Pollycat said:

Martin Lewis is not a fan of gift cards...I wouldn't sign a petition to ban them though.

Thanks. I'm not a fan either. Propose that rather than not being a fan, someone does something about it, hence I thought I'd get some comments about what I might do. Whilst I'm all for reds choice, and avoidance of the nanny state, in this case the harm occurs to someone other than the chooser, which makes a clear case to me for some sort of intervention, if not an outright ban.

Pollycat said:

Do you have a specific gripe that has set this off?

No. I read another thread on here about some really quite unfair terms which sparked this off.

Pollycat

FaceHead said:

Thanks. I'm not a fan either. Propose that rather than not being a fan, someone does something about it, hence I thought I'd get some comments about what I might do. Whilst I'm all for reds choice, and avoidance of the nanny state, in this case the harm occurs to someone other than the chooser, which makes a clear case to me for some sort of intervention, if not an outright ban.

I prefer to give people the choice.

That avoids the 'nanny state'.

davidmcn

FaceHead said:

davidmcn said:

FaceHead said:

Rarely are they sold below face value. 

 they're a large part of the employee benefit sites and so on (selling at say 5-10% below the face value), or come with other freebies attached. 

Hence I said 'rarely'. I agree they are sometimes sold below face value, but I would suggest that the majority of gift cards are bought as gifts, rather than as a route to a discount. From a quick Google, I couldn't find any reliable published data on the subject.   

Well, if we're working on anecdata, I can't remember the last time I bought one as a gift, but I've spent thousands on them for myself for the discounts. Why do you want to make it illegal for me to get 5% off at Tesco? It's hardly likely that they'll go bust or that I'll forget to visit the supermarket for two years. 

unholyangel

JamoLew said:

Cash is almost useless nowadays and I bet a good % of cash given to under 16s is immediately transformed into some sort of gift card associated to some electronic device/service

I think it likely that they will in fact become more common rather than less

How can cash both be useless and, in the same sentence, be used to buy gift cards?

Plus the "some sort of gift card" you refer to...the card is an option for people who don't want to/can't use online payment options. 

In the case of the ones I know of, the "store credit" offered by those cards doesn't expire. Which, I believe, is the OPs complaint about traditional gift cards. 

Diamandis

FaceHead said:

davidmcn said:

FaceHead said:

Rarely are they sold below face value. 

 they're a large part of the employee benefit sites and so on (selling at say 5-10% below the face value), or come with other freebies attached. 

Hence I said 'rarely'. I agree they are sometimes sold below face value, but I would suggest that the majority of gift cards are bought as gifts, rather than as a route to a discount. From a quick Google, I couldn't find any reliable published data on the subject.   

Pollycat said:

Martin Lewis is not a fan of gift cards...I wouldn't sign a petition to ban them though.

Thanks. I'm not a fan either. Propose that rather than not being a fan, someone does something about it, hence I thought I'd get some comments about what I might do. Whilst I'm all for reds choice, and avoidance of the nanny state, in this case the harm occurs to someone other than the chooser, which makes a clear case to me for some sort of intervention, if not an outright ban.

Pollycat said:

Do you have a specific gripe that has set this off?

No. I read another thread on here about some really quite unfair terms which sparked this off.

So your issue is people choose to gift gift cards to other people? I've been gifted some awful things in my years, can I complain about those too?

Spank

JamoLew said:

Cash is almost useless nowadays and I bet a good % of cash given to under 16s is immediately transformed into some sort of gift card associated to some electronic device/service

I think it likely that they will in fact become more common rather than less

Please provide your extensive list of shops that don't take cash anymore.

There any many ways to digitally transfer money to people some of those can be used in-store as well as online and don't restrict people to spending it in one shop.