SORDID TALES by Edwin Decker
FLIM-FLAMMY SCAM
Why gift certificates are a worthless pile of bogusness
I was reorganizing my office and desk the other night when I found a folder of all the unused gift certificates I’ve received over the past year or two. Most of them had either expired or were otherwise obsolete, so I angrily fed $140 worth into the shredder and ruminated over my long-standing theory that gift certificates are the greatest scam perpetrated on the American consumer since the invention of the extended-maintenance agreement.
See, when you bought your sister that gift certificate from her favorite store, Just Thermometers of El Cajon, it meant that you failed to find the right gift. There’s no shame in that, of course. Shopping for people can be a difficult task. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat. So you go to Just Thermometers and buy her a $100 gift certificate, believing somehow it’s a more personal gift than just giving money.
But how is a $100 gift certificate any more personal than a crisp, new Ben Franklin note? They are both just paper symbols of the same thing: money in waiting. There is really only one difference I can think of between a $100 gift certificate and a $100 bill: The gift certificate is worth less.
For one thing, a gift certificate has more restrictions than legal tender. What if your sister is bored with her thermometer collection? Perhaps what she really wants for Christmas is to go on a spending spree at Lakeside Bait and Tackle? That she can’t greatly diminishes the value of her gift certificate. Also, a gift certificate adds to the clutter of your sister’s life. Not just actual clutter, but mental clutter as well. Then there is the guilt and anger when a certificate never gets used. Hell, I just finished shredding 140 bucks of the hard-earned money of those who bought them for me. What an insult.
But nothing depreciates the value of a certificate more abruptly than an expiration date. On the day before that gift certificate expires, it’s worth $100. The next day, however, it has all the value of a golden ticket for a Neverland Ranch sleepover weekend. How a business has the audacity to put an expiration date on a gift certificate blows my brains right through my eyehole. There is no good reason, except that it’s a blatant attempt by the company to nullify said certificate as soon as possible—so it never gets redeemed, which is, of course, free money in their pocket, and that makes the whole thing nothing more than a scam and a sham covered by the flim of 10,000 flams.
When you factor in all these elements of depreciation—redemption value, clutter, guilt and expiration dates—suddenly that $100 gift certificate isn’t worth an infected blackhead on Ben Franklin’s pimply a**.
I say, let’s boycott gift certificates. They’re out of control. Just look at the fine print on the Amazon.com gift certificate. It reads like the regulations template on the barbed fence of a fascist war camp: “Gift certificates must be used through the website [or you vill be shot!]. Gift certificates cannot be used to purchase gift certificates [or you vill be shot!]. Gift certificates may not be redeemed for purchases at Amazon.com auctions. [Try that, Herr Decker and ve vill slice off your taste buds one at a time—then you vill be shot!].
Then there is SpaWish.com. This website offers gift certificates that are “Welcomed at over 1,000 spas nationwide.” On the home page is this happy customer testimonial: “What a cool idea! I have often wished there was a way to get a gift certificate for my [out-of-state] sister for her to use at whatever spa she wanted.” —Sherri A.
Um, Sherri, there already exists a certificate that your sister can use at whatever spa she wants. It’s called a Federal Reserve bank note of the United States Treasury—the strongest, durablest, versatilest, swingingest, spendingest gift certificate of them all! Just send her a clean crisp new hundy with a letter that says, “Use it for the spa sis, or not. What do I care, it’s your gift. Spend it as you like.”
According to the Jet Blue Airlines website, their gift certificates expire one year after purchase. One year! Screw you, Jet Blue. Your offensive expiration dates don’t confound me. I dialed 1-800-JETBLUE to tell them as much. The phone was answered by a sweet, polite young-sounding woman. “I’m interested in buying a Jet Blue gift certificate for my parents,” I said. “Is it true it expires after only one year?”
“Yes sir.”
“That’s a bit of a risk don’t you think? A hundred things could happen that would prevent them from traveling within the year!
“Yes sir, I guess that’s true.”
“Why shouldn’t I just give them cash? What advantage does a gift certificate have over cash that would make me assume that risk?”
“Well, it’s just a nice way to have a nice piece of paper with nice letterhead from Jet Blue (yes, she actually used the word “nice” three times).
“Is it blue?” I asked.
Sir?
“Is the gift certificate blue—as in Jet Blue?”
“Are you serious?” she asked, showing the first signs of annoyance.
“If the only advantage a Jet Blue gift certificate has over a greenback is the niceness of the note, then I want to know what the thing looks like.”
“It’s blue and white, sir.”
“Hmm, blue and white, that is nice. Are the letters raised?
“I think so, sir. Um, Sir?”
“Yes.”
“Is this some kind of a joke?”
Click.