Well the holiday season is upon us. Hopefully by now everyone has finished their Christmas shopping. If not you can always grab a gift card for that special someone.
Gift cards are easy to get, you can pick up gift cards just about anywhere and for just about anything. You can get them at convenience stores like 7Eleven or any department store. Gift cards com in different values $5.00, $10.00, $25.00 etc… Or you can load them with any amount you like. You can also get Visa or Mastercard gift cards, where you can use them anywhere. Gift cards also let the receiver get the gift they want, no need to return the crappy gift you gave them the day after Christmas. And they are easier to ship to someone, all you have to do is put them in a card and mail them where ever you want.
On the other hand gift cards do have their downfalls. Gift cards do expire, some have hidden fees. If you lose the card you are out of luck and lost the money. Gift cards are not always the most personal thing to give. Would you give your wife or partner a gift card for Christmas, it don’t really show that you care that much. What do you do with all the small amounts left on the gift cards? Just seems like money wasted if you leave a few dollars on a gift card.
But really what is the difference to just give cash. Then the recipient can go where ever they wanted. They don’t have to go to Old Navy to spend those gift cards, maybe they hate Old Navy. At least with cash they can save it up and buy one big gift. You can’t do that if you get gift cards from different stores.
This brings up a good question, are gift card to impersonal? Do you give gift cards? Are they a good or bad idea? What’s your take on giving or receiving gift cards? Personally I love gift cards, I just need everyone to send cards from the same place.
Comments
8 responses to “To Gift Card or Not?”
What ever you do, don’t buy a Visa gift card. Most of them have monthly fees as long as there is a balance. I didn’t use a 100 gift card for about 6 months after activating it. They were charging me $5 per month for a service fee. If I wouldn’t have used that, eventually it would have whittled away to nothing. In the end I only was able to use $70 of the $100 that my friend gave me. There’s something wrong with that.
Yea!! I wish there wasn’t such a stigma about giving cash. Theres really nothing wrong with it. It doesn’t expire or go bad, and they take it literally everywhere. I had to go out on a limb this xmas– in order to give my girlfriend an ear piercing, (that she’s really wanted) I had to risk putting cash in a little paper folded up the size of a gift card with a little note written on it. This way she could use it everywhere and get what she really wanted. It was hit or miss…results were good tho 🙂
CASH ROCKS! I’d rather get cash than a gift card anyday. I give cash, except to people like my mother, who will buy things for other people with it. Her, I give gift cards to. But I know her well, and I can totally rock her gift card world!
Cash rocks but gift cards are good too especially when you get them from the stores you go to.
I like getting giftcards, but I dont like giving them. I think it is okay to give gift cards to people you aren’t close to, but still deserve a gift.
By the way, don’t get a giftcard to any local mom & pop stores. They are shitty and they don’t work most of the time.
I’m not opposed to giving gift cards, but you have to be very careful to make sure the card has been activated properly. Last year there were a couple of people we gave gift cards to, and when they tried to use it, they were told there was no money on it! And you have to be careful to be sure the person actually loves to shop at the particular store you’re getting the gift card from.
i usually get gift cards for people i dont know what else to get for them, as you get older its much harder to search for those people and gift cards are quick and easy way to get them what they want!
It’s had to choice good gift. Gift card is good choice, but not the best. I’m going to write article in my blog about Christbas gifts ideas.