Sales are down this year. Really?

[Tuckerfan]

Actually, Max, it’s not quite like that. Generally, when someone uses a giftcard, they tend to spend slightly more than the face value of the card. Also, many giftcards have an “expiration” date on them and they’ll gradually lose value if they’re not redeemed within a certain period of time.

[mhendo]

@Max Torque

In truth, they hope you forget to ever use it.

Not only that, but if the various news stories and articles on the subject are to be believed, planty of people DO forget to use their gift cards. Depending on which source you read, unredeemed gift cards account for anywhere between $1 billion and $2 billion a year.

Of course, many (most?) gift cards these days don’t have expiry dates, and some states have even passed laws forbidding expiry periods on gift card, so theoretically those cards could be used sometime in the future. But i’ll plenty quite a few people lose them, or accidentally throw them out.

@Max Torque

Let’s say a company sold $100 million in gift cards, didn’t sell one widget of merchandise, and no one ever came in to redeem their cards. By their math, total sales are zero, and yet they’ve got a hundred million bucks in the bank. If they cried about how horrible their sales were, I’d kick 'em in the corporate nutsack.

If this story is to be believed, the companies actually want people to redeem the gift cards as soon as possible, because they can be an accounting problem. But still, i bet they’d prefer it if people never redeemed them at all.

[Max_Torque]

@mhendo

Of course, many (most?) gift cards these days don’t have expiry dates, and some states have even passed laws forbidding expiry periods on gift card, so theoretically those cards could be used sometime in the future. But i’ll plenty quite a few people lose them, or accidentally throw them out.

I saw a very sneaky workaround this year: I bought a gift card at Hooters as a “guy gift” for our gift exchange. The little cardboard dealie that the card was attached to stated that the card was subject to a “maintenance fee”, meaning that $1 would be deducted from the card each month until the balance reaches zero. They magnanimously waived the maintenance fee for the first year.

But it’s not an expiration date, it’s a “maintenance fee” that’s waived for a whole year!

[Shodan]

@elmwood

Let’s not forget that farmers in the United States always complain that the last year had the worst weather and crop yield of all time; it was either the wettest or driest season since weather statistics were first kept.

Or the big increase in crop yields mean that prices are going to be lower due to over-supply.

Economic news and farming news is always bad. It’s an election year.

Regards,
Shodan

[Voyager]

@Shodan

Or the big increase in crop yields mean that prices are going to be lower due to over-supply.

Economic news and farming news is always bad. It’s an election year.

Regards,
Shodan

It’s the media. If prices are up, and farmers doing well, they’ll run interviews with food shoppers bemoaning the cost of food. If they’re down, they’ll run interviews with farmers. We can’t win.

[Voyager]

To wrap up this thread, Mastercard reported holiday spending was up 3.6% Link but you’ve probably read this in the papers. However, 1.2% of that was on higher gas prices, leaving only a 2.4% increase. Sales aren’t down, but they were very weak.

I did my best, economy.