I'll be upfront, I very much despise gift cards. I could talk for hours about why I think they are a bad idea but here are my top 5 reasons for disliking them.
5. No thought to the gift- A gift card is not the same as you going though the work to figure out what to buy somebody. I hear the line "but this way they can buy what they really want".....that's usually the case anyway, your $50 gift card to Home Deopt hasn't likely opened a whole new world of possiblities to them. A gift is a representation of what you thought somebody would like, a gift card is a bad work around.
4. Easy to Lose/Forget - If I get a $50 Borders gift card and I don't have a Borders Book store within 100 miles of me, I would be willing to bet that I'll lose or forget the card before I get a chance to go to use it. I guess this depends on the type of person you are, but for me I don't keep the best track of everything.
3. 100% Profit if lost - There is a very good reason that every store pimps their gift cards as the "perfect gift", its because a certain percentage of gift cards are never redeemed which translates to you handing your money to a store and walking out without any purchases. Its corporate welfare disguised as the perfect convenient gift when you ran out of time and couldn't come up with anything better.
2. Another Thing to Carry - If I get 3-4 gift cards on a holiday, that's 3-4 more cards I have to carry around in my wallet until I use them (which might be never). My wallet has 1 debit card, 1 credit card, my license and usually a few business cards that I carry until I put them in a desk somewhere. 4 gift cards are annoying to carry around and keep track of.
1. Cash is Better - This is what really gets me. If you aren't going to go through the effort of shopping for and giving an actual gift, why would you prefer to give a gift card instead of CASH. You know what the best thing about cash is? You can use it anywhere and on anything you want. I've heard the excuse of "I want them to buy themselves a gift, not spend it on bills"..... if I need to spend the money you gave me to pay my bills, you have given me a very, very nice gift. Electricty, running water, heat, they are all very nice to have and if I'm ever in a position where I might not be able to pay for one of them, then I would cry "Thank You" for $100 cash as opposed to a $100 Amazon Gift card.
On the same note, I've seen these "American Express" gift cards where you basically give the person a pre-paid credit card with the gift amount on it; unless you're giving that to a teenager who wants to buy something online and doesn't have access to any kind of credit card, just give them cash. At that point its exactly the same except with cash you won't end up trying to find something to buy so you can spend that last $1.18 that you have on your card.
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