RSSTake Your Gift Cards And Shove Them
J.J. Jackson | December 28, 2009
Gift cards piss me off more and more each year at Christmas because I firmly believe that people giving them think that they are really giving a gift to friends and family members. It used to be that when you did not know what to give someone and you really wanted to give them something you put a couple dollars in a card and wished them a Merry Christmas. Then along came gift cards which are often store specific and if not cost extra pennies to procure (like Visa Gift Cards) for the privilege of being able to give them.
Gift cards are fine IF you know that they are for a store the recipient shops at. We get gift cards all the time for Babys/Toys R Us because we have two young kids. Ok, at least you thought about what we might need. But why say basically, “Hey, here’s a little something for you BUT you have to spend it at this specific store.” We buy most of our clothes for our son and daughter at consignment shops and between Christmas and their birthdays, the toys they receive from Santa, friends and family keep them more than happy for the next year. So what exactly are we going to Toys R Us to buy? Not much. But now we have a gift cards and are made to go there to spend it, often buying something that exceeds the $10 or $25 on the card just to use it.
Give me a gift card to the Home Depot and I am happy because I always have something that needs done around the house. But every year I get a gift card to Sears, a store where I refuse to shop at due to previous and numerous bad encounters and everyone in my family knows it because I make a point of saying so every year when the Sears gift card shows up in my hands. Thankfully K-mart does accept the Sears cards considering they are owned by the same company but I rarely go there too. Basically I make two trips to K-mart every year. One the weekend after Christmas to spend my Christmas “present” and one after my birthday to spend my birthday “present.”
This year I got a gift card to TJ Maxx. You know the last time I shopped at TJ Maxx? Heck, even I cannot remember! The only thing I vaguely remember about going to TJ Maxx was thinking how hideous their clothing selections were. But at least it is something I might be able to use compared to the computer video game the person who gave the TJ Maxx card this year gave me last year. I haven’t played computer video games going on four years now since I gave up EverQuest in favor of making money while spending time on the internet. And I have no intention to start again. That game went right to Goodwill and I got a smidge of a tax write off.
Then this year I also recieved a Visa Gift Card. Ever buy one of these darlings? Basically to give someone money you have to pay Visa money on top of the money you want to give as well. WTF is up with that? So to give me $25 you paid what? $30? Hey, how about this – give me the $30 instead?
This sort of thing is ridiculous. And judging by the looks of things it isn’t just me that is annoyed to all Hell and back by gift cards. Every single person I have spoken to over the past few days is at least minorly annoyed by them and most are much more so. As one friend of mine pointed out, and I have thought many times myself, she received $375 worth of gift cards for Christmas. Which would be great and helped her buy something she really needed except for one little problem. Look at each of them and there was $10 for one place, $25 for another place and $50 for yet another. So instead of her being able to get one really nice gift she got, “37 really small things,” and spent an additional $100 dollars of her own money to cover the fact that in order to use up each card she needed to fork over her own money to cover overages since never was she able to find exactly the gift card amount at each store.
Can all of you out there still giving gift cards please take them and shove them up your you know what please? Honestly, you are being laughed at mostly by those that receive them. If you want to give cash, then please by all means give cash. Unless you know for a fact that I need something from a particular store, but are perhaps unsure about exactly what, then give cash. You will be much more appreciated and cursed much less.
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