Gift Cards should be banned

born_again

FaceHead said:

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? 

So basically you are wanting regulation over lazy unimaginative relatives then...

Get given a gift card spend it straight away. Far too many people hang onto them, or forget about them. More fool them.

I have used plenty where I got a good % discount via work. But they were bought to spend straight away.
Morrisons used to have offers where if you bought one of the many various gift cards they sold. You got bonus points.

Tokmon

FaceHead said:

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? 

I don't see how harm occurs to recipient because gift cards are usually given as gifts so that means if they don't work they don't lose or gain anything but if they do work then they gain, so they can't actually lose out.

I personally think Gift Cards are a bit pointless and just a lazy present given by someone who thinks it's good because it's better than cash when it certainly isn't. But I certainly don't think they should be banned because it's peoples choice if they want to buy them and they are many many silly gifts people are able to freely buy and they shouldn't be banned either.

You would be better off starting a campaign about giving cash instead of gift cards with a nice catchy slogan and graphics and that will be far more useful. 

IvanOpinion

Personally I would say to keep gift cards and get rid of cash - dirty filthy unhygenic stuff.