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giftcards
giftcards
Adventures In Honesty: Chase Credit Card Rewards
By Laura Northrup on February 9, 2012 11:30 AM
14 Comments
Zach's parents used their Chase rewards points to send him a nice gift. He was thrilled to find three $25 gift cards to Amazon! Except, um, they had only sent him one. It was obviously a mailing error, and Zach reached out to Chase to straighten it out. Having a customer call in to complain that he received too many gift cards was apparently an unprecedented event at this Chase call center. But for raising an honest son, Chase will reward his parents with extra points. More »
Don't Bother Getting A Kindle Fire Unless You Have A Credit Card
By Laura Northrup on January 13, 2012 9:00 AM
194 Comments
Heather really likes her new Kindle Fire, once she got it working, but she's sending it back. Why would she do that? Because the Fire isn't a very fun device without Amazon Prime, and you need to have a credit card to sign up for Prime. She doesn't have any credit cards, and she doesn't want any. So back the Kindle goes. More »
(ashi)
Chipotle Understands When Your Dog Eats Your Gift Card
By Laura Northrup on January 11, 2012 9:31 AM
34 Comments
John's greyhound has no patience. If the dog had waited just a little while, the Chipotle gift card in a paper sleeve that his fiancée left on the kitchen table would have been magically transformed into food. But dogs don't think that way, and this dog really, really likes to chew up paper. And so the $50 gift card was destroyed. More »
$2 Billion In Gift Cards Will Go Unused This Year
By Chris Morran on January 6, 2012 2:36 PM
48 Comments
If you received gifts this last holiday season, there's a good chance at least one of them was a gift card. But while the cards are an easy way to give someone a gift other than cash or socks, a number of people just aren't getting around to spending the money on those cards in a timely manner. More »
If CVS Sells You Something Expired, It's Your Own Damn Fault
By Laura Northrup on January 6, 2012 9:30 AM
113 Comments
Reader Andy noticed this sign in near the breakfast foods in a local CVS. It instructs customers to check the expiration dates of the items they choose before taking them up to the cash register. It's an innovative idea: maybe they're aiming to crowdsource stock rotation. More »
CVS Sells Customer Expired Prepaid Debit Card, Shrugs
By Laura Northrup on January 5, 2012 9:30 AM
63 Comments
Last year, Mike bought a Vanilla Visa prepaid debit card at CVS as a gift for a friend, who promptly forgot that the card existed until about a year later. The card doesn't work, but not because it's been dormant for the last year and had its balance eaten up in fees. No, the problem is that this card expired in July 2010, before it was even purchased. CVS never should have sold him this card. Now neither CVS nor Vanilla Visa will take responsibility for the problem, and are even accusing Mike of being a scammer. More »
You Can Buy Blockbuster Gift Cards Again, But Your Old One's Still Worthless
By Laura Northrup on December 16, 2011 8:00 AM
28 Comments
We're going to go out on a limb here and guess that there is absolutely no one out there who can't wait to buy a Blockbuster gift card. It's not exciting consumer news. The curious thing is that while you can buy a Blockbuster gift card today at any of their retail stores, a card for the same brand that you might still have in your desk drawer from only nine months ago is just a worthless piece of plastic. Blame the bankruptcy and sale of Blockbuster. More »
Wells Fargo And Visa Take A Month To Refund $400 Gift Card Error
By Laura Northrup on August 25, 2011 11:05 AM
50 Comments
It's a pretty simple error; easy enough to make. When Todd asked for a $100 Visa gift card at Wells Fargo, the teller misheard "for a hundred" as "four hundred." $400 was promptly taken out of his bank account and placed on the card, and Todd was never asked to authorize the amount in writing. It was only when he checked the receipt after leaving the bank that he found the error. He set off to get his money put back into his account, but it wasn't so simple even just minutes after the transaction. Adding a credit card company into the mix adds a new and exciting level of bureaucracy when dealing with a large bank. More »
Get Your Christmas Creep Gift Cards At Sam's Club
By Laura Northrup on August 15, 2011 10:00 AM
20 Comments
If you're planning to give a Sam's Club gift card to someone you care about (or someone to whom you're obligated to give a gift) this winter gift-giving season, Sam's Club has you covered. Now. In mid-August. "It's going to be over 100 degrees outside ALL WEEK..and has been the past 2-3 weeks," writes Joel, the blogger who noticed these cards at his local Sam's. "100 degree heat, drought, and Christmas Gift cards. Go Texas?" More »
How A Sears Promotion Gobbled Up $25 Of My Money
By Laura Northrup on July 8, 2011 3:30 PM
61 Comments
Kenneth isn't quite sure what to do. He bought enough men's clothing items at Sears to trigger a deal giving him a restricted $25 gift card to Sears. Hooray! Only when he came back to return some of the items, the card's value was deducted from his refund, forcing him to spend $25 more at Sears than he had ever planned to. More »
Still Have A Sharper Image Gift Card? It Might Actually Be Worth Something
By Chris Morran on July 7, 2011 3:15 PM
16 Comments
When gadget galleria Sharper Image stopped accepting gift cards only days after filing for bankruptcy protection in February 2008, consumers were left holding an estimated $19 million in useless plastic. But a class-action case against the company has managed to wrest some money from the shuttered company for those who were screwed over three years ago. More »
Oregon Lawmakers Want To Cash Out Small-Balance Gift Cards
By Phil Villarreal on May 26, 2011 2:30 PM
71 Comments
Gift cards with just a few bucks left on them are nagging annoyances. Oregon's state house is fed up with the glorified plastic coupons and passed a bill that would require businesses to let customers exchange them for cash. More »
(Plaszloc)
Online Service Turns Your Unwanted Gift Cards Into Cold Hard Cash
By Mary Beth Quirk on May 16, 2011 8:30 AM
29 Comments
We've all gotten a gift card to that one place you'd never step foot in, much less purchase something from. So the chance to turn that unwanted bit of plastic into something you actually want, say, cash, or credit somewhere else, is an enticing idea. More »
(dooley)
USPS Attempts To Fight Off Financial Disaster By Selling Gift Cards
By Chris Morran on May 2, 2011 12:30 PM
67 Comments
As the US Postal Service faces insolvency, the relic of a pre-internet world (and symbol/punch line for inefficiency and ineptitude) has come up with a really good idea for making some extra cash: Selling pre-paid AMEX, Visa, MasterCard and Discover cards. More »
Use Up Your Blockbuster Gift Cards Before April 7, 2011
By Laura Northrup on March 30, 2011 2:00 PM
18 Comments
Do you have any Blockbuster Video gift cards lying around the house? Better find them and use them up soon, assuming that you can find a Blockbuster outlet. Multiple sources inside the company have let us know that those gift cards won't be accepted after April 6, 2011 due to the company's bankruptcy. More »
Will Making Gift Cards Entirely Virtual Make Them Better?
By Laura Northrup on March 30, 2011 12:18 PM
27 Comments
We at Consumerist have long taken a stance against gift cards: they're like giving someone a gift of cash, only with rules and limitations. What's the point of that? There's a whole secret economy in unused gift cards in America: up to 20% of the things are never used up. But some planned changes to gift cards could theoretically make them easier to spend and harder to lose. More »
Do Gift Card Laws Keep My Groupons From Expiring?
By Mary Beth Quirk on January 25, 2011 11:30 AM
24 Comments
As Groupon continues to expand across the country into more and more markets, consumers are finding they're not quite sure how to deal with this new beast when it comes to state laws governing coupons and gift certificates. More »
Employee: Borders Is Making Us Push Loyalty Cards That May Be Worthless If Company Declares Bankruptcy
By Phil Villarreal on January 14, 2011 3:30 PM
111 Comments
Borders has struggled to pay publishers and may be facing bankruptcy. As a result, one employee is alleging the bookseller is getting desperate, ordering employees to encourage customers to buy loyalty cards that could lose all value if the company files Chapter 11. More »
Barnes & Noble Bot: Your Order Is Canceled And You Get No Refund (Updated)
By Phil Villarreal on January 5, 2011 3:30 PM
77 Comments
UPDATE: Barnes & Noble refunded Meghan's money and gave her a $25 gift certificate. The original post follows: More »
New Jersey Wants To Balance Budget With Your Gift Cards
By Laura Northrup on January 5, 2011 9:30 AM
82 Comments
What would be even worse than losing the entire stored value of your gift cards after a few years? Having the state seize it as unclaimed property and use your money to pay its bills. More »
