I have a 13-year-old niece who always needs clothes. She does not want other people picking out clothes for her, she prefers to pick them out herself. On the other hand, she’s irresponsible with money, because she’s a 13-year-old girl. So, if I buy her a gift card to a store that sells only clothing, she gets to pick out her own clothes and her parents don’t have to worry about her getting cash and spending it on CDs and candy (because I could have picked out the CDs and candy just fine myself).
Also, if I give my brother and sister-in-law money, they would, like responsible people, pay bills or something like that with it. If I buy them a gift certificate to their favorite restaurant, they can have a relaxing night out without feeling guilty.
I like the concept of giving / receiving gift cards. My friend has got me one from a local music store, so I can get $25 worth of guitar strings or the like. My mother-in-law got me a certificate from amazon.com, which I’ve already used to get two expensive CDs. That’s a much better plan than buying a book / CD / DVD for someone and having them return it because it wasn’t their taste.
I agree that it’s not as though you gave someone a bunch of cash, which they might use to pay the bills. They have to spend it on something nice for themselves, which they might not otherwise have bought.
I wouldn’t buy my wife clothing, but I would get her a gift certificate from a clothing store that she could use to buy something she likes. That would make her happy, which would make me happy.
I love gift cards! No one shops for me as well as I do, and I assume that’s true for other people as well.
As some others have noted, they’re essential for the teenagers on your list. I know what my daughter likes, and I could easily hand her ten cds that she’d love, but that’s less enjoyable for her than going to the music store and picking them out herself. She’ll probably come home with the same ten cds, but she got to go shopping!
When it became a gift card exchange, that’s when we knew it was time to halt the gift exchange for adults. Now we just sit around and harass each other all day – which is what Christmas is really all about.
Visa, MasterCard and AMEX branded gift cards add service charges because they can. I guess they think that having a nearly universally accepted gift card can justify the added charge. Whatever.
Consumer advocates warn against buying the credit card branded gift cards, not just because of the “service charge” but because a lot of them EXPIRE after x months. Apparently they do not fall under the state consumer protection laws that have been passed recently which do things like disallow expiration dates on the cards.
Bottom line: If you’re going to give gift cards, consumer advocates recommend giving store branded cards (e.g. Starbucks) vs. the credit-card branded cards. Read the fine print and make sure that there are no expiration dates and no “monthly service charges” after x months which will render the card useless in a short amount of time.
And, for the love of pete, if you get a gift card, USE IT immediately lest it end up in the bottom of your junk drawer.
I do like getting and giving “Store Branded” gift cards. It still says they thought of me and my particular taste in store. “I know you like movies and music, so go get yourself some at BestBuy with this $50 gitcard” or “I always see you drinking coffee, so have a few on me at Starbucks” or “You and your spouse deserve a night out, here’s $150 for La’Frenchie Bistro.”
However, I do think the Visa/Mastercard ones are as impersonal as cash. It’s pretty much saying “I know nothing about you or your interests, so go spend this however you feel.”
Hallgirl2 is moving out on her own (from her boyfriends apartment) and needs money for incidental things. She’s half way across the country. Yes, I could have sent her a check (and waited for her to deposit it at her bank, after she’s set up a seperate account from her soon-to-be-ex boyfriend, then wait for her bank to clear it with my bank, blah, blah, blah), or risked sending her cash in the mail, or possibly hunted down some store in Minot, North Dakota that offers gift cards that she might or might not be willing to purchase something from. OR…
I could just send her a substancial VISA gift card (and pay $4.95 to activate it) that she can use anywhere (gas station, resturaunt, grocery store, utility company, etc.) for anything she needs or wants. Would I have done it with a $20 gift card? No, but considering the amount on the gift card, I was willing to pay an extra $4.95 for the convenience of her being able to use it anywhere.
For myself, I’d rather receive a gift card than a “what in the hell were they thinking?” present.
We exchange gift cards, but we try to do it for places where it is a treat to shop. No supermarket, or Starbucks, or even Home Depot gift cards. I like to tinker with my computer, so I get cards for places I can buy upgrades. The Mrs. gets high-end clothing, places she normally wouldn’t shop. That way, Mrs. D_Odds doesn’t have to figure out what component is best for my PC, something she knows little about, and I don’t have to attempt to pick out correctly-sized, stylish women’s clothing.
I like 'em. As Hampshire said, it’s somewhat personalised–they have some idea of your tastes–but you can still pick out what you want. I like getting them because while my family may have some idea of the types of things I like, they wouldn’t know what exactly I want. For example I like anime, but I wouldn’t be too thrilled getting either Inuyasha or one of the Ghost in the Shell movies (the former I’m not interested in that much, the latter I already have.) But a giftcard to CDPlus would be much appreciated.
[mini-rant]The exception to this being giftcards to places like Wal-Mart, since you can buy almost anything there. Plus I just don’t like department stores.[/mini-rant]
Exactly. My family and friends know that a gift card to Barnes & Noble or The Body Shop is a gift I will like and appreciate. I use the cards to buy myself something special that I normally wouldn’t, such as the boxed set of Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies Home Detective series or some special bath stuff. This year, there’s a wonderful book on cables I’ve got my eye on. I might not spend $20 or $30 bucks on it on my own, but if someone’s giving it to me as a present via the gift card, it makes a wonderful gift. I also try to remember to write a thank you note letting the person who got me the card know what I bought with it and how much I enjoy it.
The one Visa branded gift card that I’ve ever received didn’t add any “startup” service charges when I used it; however I don’t know whether the donor paid any extra service charges when it was originally bought (the donor was in fact my employer - I got it as an award).
For the first time this year, I’ve been buying gift cards for stores (e.g. Chapters), but not for any of the reasons so far mentioned. I’ve collected “Air Miles” for quite some time and decided I couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of saving up enough to convert them into a worthwhile trip, so I decided to convert a large chunk of them into several $50 gift cards. It meant I could give a bunch of nice Christmas presents without spending any “real” money!
I’ll probably do the same for my Aeroplan Miles this coming year since they are getting more persnickety about expiring unused miles.
Yeah, he did. My company had batches of those sent out one time. Also, the fine print will say that after some amount of time, like six months or a year, your balance drops by a buck or two a month until it’s all gone. And of course there’s the problem of small amounts left over. When I tried to get rid of the last couple of bucks on mine I had to train the cashier how to do a split cash/charge sale, while the guy behind me groaned.
So I imagine there’s a fair slice that doesn’t reach the recipient, on average.
As to store-specific cards, it’s even worse. I got that Old Navy card (I just presumed there was a premium paid by the giver, apparently not) and had a heck of a time trying to figure out what to buy.
Got one item I really didn’t want just so I could show it to the giver as what they got me, and gave the leftover portion to a niece, who was unsure if she would ever use it either.
I like gift cards much more than cash gifts, which I wind up depositing in the bank and spending on bills instead of fun stuff for me. Even if I come up with something I want to buy with the money, if I don’t buy it right away, it starts to feel an awful lot like I’m buying it with my own money, instead of with gift money.
For example, my wife’s grandmother gave me cash for my birthday, and I intended to use it to buy a beer homebrew kit. Fast forward 6 months, I never got around to making the purchase, and I can now think of better things to spend “my” money on than a brew kit.
If the gift was a certificate to a homebrew store, I’d be drinking one of my own beers right now.
A few years ago the Mall of America in the Twin Cities offered a gift card you could use at any store in the mall. (Perhaps they still offer it.) When I found out they charged an extra fee to get the card, I decided to give cash instead.
For the teenage niece and nephews this year, ages that I would likely buy something just plain wrong, I typed up a piece of paper and attached a $20 bill. The paper said “Federal Reserve Bank Gift Certificate. Use it the same as a plastic gift card. Redeemable at millions of stores. No user fees or expiration date.”
I understand why gift cards are being pushed (as indicated by news report mentioned by Cardiwen). They have their uses, and Dopers here have illustrated many of them, but I do prefer the flexibility of cash.
I love gift cards - giving them and recieving them. I hoard mine away (the ones that don’t expire) until I really want something, or just pass them on to my brother as birthday or Christmas presents since they’re pretty close together for him. He doesn’t care that it’s impersonal, and appreciates them as much as I do.
My school gives book vouchers to people who get first in a subject or win certain awards. I definitely appreciate those. It’s real motivation (bribery) to do well and involve yourself. Although I must admit I was *slightly * disappointed when I won 1st place in the speech competition and got book vouchers, while everyone else who placed was given huge blocks of chocolate. And the chocolate was giftwrapped, too! Sigh. But yeah, gift vouchers are great things. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
The only problem I have with giftcards is that they are sometimes purchased from places I am opposed to supporting. It kind of pisses me off that the money is already in thier pocket. This is exacerbated by the “secret santa” scenerio mentioned above…somebody who basically knows squat about me trying to please a generic anyone.
Case in point: I like coffee, so a Starbucks gift card would be great, right? Sorry, I like GOOD coffee, so the Charbucks card will be re-gifted.
So if your giving one, try to find out if the recipient has a hard on for Wal-Mart first. Sure, they have lots and lots of stuff, and it is cheap, so the gift card will go a long way…but many folks refuse to set foot in those stores as a matter of principal.
Sorry for double posting, but I just recalled a great positive gift-card experience.
At a small company I worked for it was traditional to celibrate each employee’s “landmark” aniverserys, Actually 5 years of service…since the company was only a bit over 5 years in existance. A gift, selected for that employee was traditional.
Several of the other employees were really into fly fishing. I’ve always wanted to learn, and so I used to ask them lots of questions.
Better than a fly-rod, was a gift card for a locally owned fly fishing shop. Not only was it a fly-rod, but it was also the experience of learning which rod was best for what purpose, yada, yada, yada. For those that don’t know, talking about fly fishing, and thinking about fly fishing, and shopping for fly fishing, are as much a part of the culture as the fishing itself. By giving the gift card, I got a bunch of that as well as a fly rod.
