• Mr Fish@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    6 months later, all three cards have expired, so all three companies get $25 of free revenue, and no one really got anything for Christmas.

    Gift cards are a fucking scam

    • JimVanDeventer@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Gift cards expiring isn’t legal in Canada. We just expect you to lose them, and there is still plenty of profit in that, apparently.

      • misophist@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        They don’t expire here, 3ither, but I found a 10-year-old gift card after a move and the company had switched to a new gift card system, so I had to spend an hour calling around to get my ancient gift card converted to modern store credit. It was not worth it for $20.

    • thetreesaysbark@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      I wonder if prices being 24.99 makes a difference here too.

      That would mean that for each gift card where the full amount is not spent, the company keeps 0.01. That 0.01 is technically owed but it doesn’t prevent the company from earning interest on the unspent cash (I don’t think).

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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      9 months ago

      I hate them.

      They basically force you to go to a specific store after the holidays before the allotted time expires. What if I don’t have time to go to that store? What if I don’t need anything from that store? What if I don’t like the store?

      I’d rather they give me something useless than a gift card that is going to expire anyway.

      • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        What if I don’t have time to go to that store?

        How short is the time in your gift cards that you can’t find the time to use it??

  • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    $75 gdp without having to do a god damn thing, and then the plastic gets tossed into a landfill.

    • grendel@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      $100-$150, they either all had to buy a card or at least one of them had to buy one for others to regift.

        • Squorlple@lemmy.worldOP
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          9 months ago

          I had originally meant for the meme to communicate Person A buying one $25 card for Person B and one $25 card for Person C and Persons B and C buying the same for each other and Person A simultaneously, which would be $25 * 2 * 3 = $150 spent.

          However, I also figure a non-simultaneous gift exchange could occur, which engenders a couple of other scenarios:

          Person A could buy one $25 card for Person B, which Person B re-gifts to Person C, who then re-re-gifts it back to Person A, which would be $25 spent.

          Alternatively, Person A buys one $25 card for Person B, Person B buys one $25 card for Person C, and Person C buys one $25 card for Person A. Each person then re-gifts their card to the remaining person who has never owned the card. The three original cards are again re-gifted from their third owner back to their original owner. $25 * 3 = $75 spent.

  • son_named_bort@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Gets $25 gift card

    Regifts it to friend

    Friend regifts it to another friend

    That friend gives it to me

    Gets $25 gift card

    Regifts it to friend and so forth

    So yeah, we’re basically keeping the economy afloat.

      • TheHarpyEagle@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Movement of money = economy

        Gift cards are just fancy plastic money

        Ergo, OP is doing God’s the invisible hand’s work.

        Source: I am not an economist

  • pingveno@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    The one area where gift cards are nice is when you for sure know that someone is going to be shopping somewhere and will use it up. My husband and I recently gained two nephews through his brother’s fiancee’s previous marriage. There’s a local game store that the boys love, so we got them gift cards paired with an outing to the store and lunch. My brother-in-law and his fiancee just had a baby, our niece, so it’s also a way to give them a little bit of a break. It wouldn’t have been existing for them if it had just been cash.

    • Chakravanti@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      What happens when you can but the other guy is broke including homeless now. Do you murder the economy just because the “mutual” “giving” dies on one end?

  • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    They also borrowed the money from each other too, so each has a $25 card and a $25 debt. The debt will never be paid, and they’ll acrue interest with each other. They’ll all use the growing debt as a justification to cut social services.