Posted on 12/25/2006 9:13:03 AM PST by rellimpank
He says expired gift card money should flow to treasury
Incoming freshman Assemblyman Ruben Kihuen, a Las Vegas Democrat, would like to see expiring gift card money flow to the state treasury by defining it as abandoned property. Photo by Jeff Scheid.
CARSON CITY -- Incoming freshman Assemblyman Ruben Kihuen went out to dinner with a friend recently, planning to use a $100 gift card he had received last year as a Christmas gift to pay for the meal.
To Kihuen's dismay, the gift card had expired, meaning the high-end restaurant that issued the card had received a $100 windfall at the expense of the gift card giver.
Kihuen, a Las Vegas Democrat, said he would like to change this practice and instead have expired gift card money flow to the state treasury by defining it as abandoned property.
If a merchant has no address
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I told my wife this Christmas: no gift cards. Give cash
I've already done that because I never get around to "cashing in" the gift cards, so I've told them that if they give me one, I'll donate it to the first homeless person I see on the street. I think they are CRAP.
Gee whiz guy, one of the reasons for having a government is to stop thieves from plying their trade. So, if somebody is stealing seems to me it's OK for the county sheriff to hang them or something. And despite that I'm just asking for the thieves to make their victims whole.
For the most part these guys are practicing conversion and should be punished appropriately ~ I'm thinking of what they were doing in late Medieval England ~ this Congress-critter is entirely too soft on them.
BTW, many of these guys don't indicate at the time of the offer that there's a time-limit on the card. None of them to my knowledge offer information about how you can cash them in for real money.
You will find this to be the case almost universally where they give you a so-called "rebate" ~ the advertisements NEVER state that the rebate will come in the form of a card that has an expiration date.
No doubt this would disappear completely if a couple of the CEOs of some of the larger firms doing this were prosecuted and sent to jail for many years, or, better yet, simply executed (although that might well require some more changes on the USSC, I'm confident there'd be widespread sympathy with all those ideas).
Few of these guys have a clean audit trail, and there are lawsuits underway in many cases. However, most folks won't go to court for $10.
The law prescribes 180 days. Did you really imagine that law was passed to benefit the recipients?
They are prepared to pay the costs, for at least 2 years (depending on how large the card is given the rot rate Borders could easily be holding the liability for 5 or 6 years). That's actually a long time to be sitting on a liability with no hope of clearing it.
The information is there, they don't wave it around loudly but it's there and available. Most of them actually won't let you turn them back into cash, much like a governmental budget line the rule is use it or lose it.
I agree with that. If you buy a gift card it should be good forever. I mean you used cash to buy it so then it should be seen as cash.
This is a racket used by businesses to getway with thinking that people will not use it and they pocket the cash you used for a gift card.
So if you buy a gallon of milk at the store with cash, should it be seen as cash too?
A gift card, just like a gallon of milk or a lawn mower, is a product that the store sells.
double that. It's a total PITA to keep gift card liability on the books. Gift cards do have marketing virtue, so there is a reason other than collecting the free money from non-redeemers. Turning abandoned gift cards into unclaimed property is probably the fairest deal - and gets them off the books (and you get to use the cash interest free until you turn it over to the state, hey!).
If the state gobbles up the money from gift cards, then the state must pay consumers for gift cards issued by companies that go out of business. That's only logical and fair. Of course no govnmt would ever see it that way.
Just saw this exact topic being discussed on CNBC. Some greedy West Virginia politician also says the state should be the recipient of these unused gift cards. It's only a matter of time, folks. This guy is probably a Democrat as well.
Merchants who choose to take money up front for expiring gift cards are setting themselves up for this type of big gubmint b.s. and aren't likely to garner a whole lot of sympathy from the general populace.
About the only advantage I can see is that if the new Democrat majority is occupied with feel good penny-ante b.s. of this nature, maybe they will have less time to defund our military, install moving sidewalks on our borders and turn us so quickly into a Euroweenie socialist state hell-bent on national suicide.
Sure, one can easily be carried on the books, even a few. Where the problem always comes in for data is the quantity. One record isn't much, one million becomes an issue.
Just because the general populace doesn't sympathize doesn't mean the general populace is right and doesn't mean it is legitimate for the government to get involved. Look at minimum wage laws, plenty of public sympathy, all wrong headed and counter productive. The reality is they all have to expire eventually, you really don't honestly expect that if you buy a Staples gift card today and then lose it in some hopechest for your great grandkids to be able to spend it when they find it in 2106 do you?! Sure they don't say their cards expire but there is absolutely no way they'll carry an account as open for 100 years, eventually every business needs to be able close an open account. You can quibble over the time table but to deny the necessity is to live in a fantasy land.
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