I remember when a guy sold his restaurant to his landlord a few years ago. He offered to sell him the unused gift certificates for $.25 on the dollar. They refused. He kept the account and waited the required time period. Had $25,000 to play with because people never used them.

It's amazing how much money is just lying around because people either forget, misplace, or simply don't care.

I have a gift card for 25 bucks I've had in my wallet for 5 years - I got it as a moving away gift and that group of "national chain" restaurants doesn't have any outlets in my neck of the woods. But it's never decreased, I do check every blue moon or so. Usually when I'm headed to another part of the country on business and think I might be able to use it there.

I should sell it on eBay, I suppose.

beer4breakfast: CarrieWhite: Ones here have expiry dates. That doesn't happen there?

Depends on the state. CA law doesn't allow gift cards to expire.

or have "maintenance fee's"

Headso: just the other day my wife used a gift card and the cashier tried to give it back to her with 5 cents on it. I remember when you'd get cash back if it was under like 5 bucks or so...get off my lawn!

I work at Gap. We still do that

The only time I ever get gift cards is if I want something from Amazon. Otherwise, it's just silly to buy them.

From a business prospective, gift cards are a stupidly easy way to gain business and make money. It introduces new clients to your business when someone gifts them to someone else, and gives free profits from the seigniorage that is inherit in the nature of gift cards. If I sell 100K in gift cards, and only 80K of that is redeemed, I just made myself 20K from doing absolutely nothing.

The great thing about money is that it doesn't expire.

I think gift cards encourage to spend more than the actual amount of the card, because you don't want to not use all of it. Or you just don't use them at all.

It would be great if there were some way to take the unused dollars and cents from a gift card someone gave you and were able to give them to a charity?

A friend of mine set up a thing that something similar with air miles and loyalty points.

Gift Cards - The perfect gift for the Fortune 500 in your life™

jjorsett: I've long thought that unused gift cards should be subject to escheat, but I'd bet that the real revenue raiser would be unredeemed mail-in rebates. States should require that those rebates be declared and once expired, the state would get the money. Not only would it prevent those bastards from keeping the large numbers of unclaimed rebates, it would make it much less attractive to the sellers and they'd stop that bullshiat practice.

Good point, conceptually unredeemed gift cards and unclaimed mail-in rebates are similar. But AFAIK no state treats unclaimed mail-in rebates as unclaimed property (i.e. subject to escheat).

Escheat is when no one owns something, so since someone has to be the owner, the state becomes the owner; after all, it was the state that granted the property right in the first place. Every state has laws about unclaimed property and a little bureaucracy to oversee it.

When a company has unclaimed property, it becomes a pain in their faceless corporate backside because they must figure out how to account for it, which state's law applies to that particular item, and then fill out some forms and, eventually, turn it over to the right state. To prevent this headache, because compliance with the unclaimed property law usually costs MegaCorp a lot more than the amount at issue, the company would love to slap an expiration date on the gift card. Once upon a time gift cards did have expiration dates. But some pointy-headed state legislators decreed this would be unfair to consumers in their states. Because expiration dates are not allowed in some states, MegaCorp's legal dept decides it can't use them in any state. Now, in some states BigCo's lobbyists are able to enact a law saying gift cards don't become unclaimed property, so if they go unused for the statutory period, say seven years, the company can then treat it as income not subject to escheat. But other states have not addressed it, so BigCo has to hire me and my rapacious brethren to help them figure out what it all means.

Anyhow, I'm partially with you jjorsett -- I refuse to buy anything that requires me as a consumer to participate in a foul, shiat-stained mail-in rebate scheme. And it is true, if unclaimed mail-in rebates had to be accounted for as unclaimed property, it would end the odious practice entirely. But it is not practicable. Suppose Sony sells a TV to Best Buy. Best Buy sells it to me, for cash, with a mail-in rebate, which requires me to send the receipt to Sony to get the $20 back. Should Sony be deemed to have made $20 if I never mail in the receipt? So jj proposes. But of course I refuse to fill out and send in the stupid "warranty" card, so Sony has no way of knowing who bought that TV that day, and they can't even begin to comply with unclaimed property laws as to that transaction. If Sony had to account for the unclaimed rebate as income, you can bet that a system to ensure positive identification of the end purchaser would not be far behind.

almandot: Always kinda dumbfounding when you work retail and somebody comes in with an oldschool paper gift certificate from several decades past. Took you this long to want to use it?

I did this once at Home Depot. I don't know when I picked up the gift certificate, but by the time I brought it in (years later), the cashier looked at it funny and wondered aloud if it was any good. I pointed out that there was no listed expiration date, and made her get the manager. Once they finally figured out that they were on the hook for the full amount, the cashier rang me up, then tried to sell me another gift certificate (or gift card, I'm not sure) ... which made me wonder aloud why the hell I would since they weren't particularly friendly about honoring this one, despite the obvious legal requirement.

I mean, seriously...?

My mother always used to buy my wife and I Banana Republic gift cards. I used to shop there, but they suddenly went upscale hipster, so we never really used our cards. We built up nearly a grand in them, as we didn't have the heart to tell her that we weren't using them.

/luckily we moved to another country, so we just blew them on random clothes.