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Congratulations! You are the recipient of American's most wanted
gift, the gift card. The gift card can be exchanged for many useful and
necessary items. Cash is not one of them.
Please read the following instructions to learn how to use your new gift card.
Gift cards come with a number of different designs on the front. Ignore the
picture; it is the amount that the card will purchase that matters, and they are
all spent exactly the same way. You can tell how much the balance is on the card
by calling the phone number conveniently located on the back of the card and
entering the secret identification number, also on the back of the card.
When you have decided what you want to purchase with your gift card, take it to
the retail store indicated on the front of the card. This will most likely be a
store you have never heard of with items you are not interested in buying. This
is how friends encourage you to try new experiences and to acquire items that
you cannot afford. Also, it is how retailers make extra profit from gift cards.
Regardless of the item you select, it will always cost more than the gift card
is worth and you will have to pay the additional amount yourself. In this way
you are assured of receiving a gift that is exactly what you want, regardless of
whether the giver can afford it or not.
In the unlikely event that you select an item which is less expensive than the
value of the gift card, you will have approximately $1.58 left on the card. You
will then need to carry it around for the rest of your life, or until you find
another item that you want to purchase and remember to use the card's balance.
Gift cards are plastic money, like credit cards, except after they are spent you
cannot continue buying with them. You can, however, have them reactivated in
whatever amount you wish to pay. Why on earth you would want to reactivate a
gift card has never been explained. You can also keep the worthless card as a
souvenir after you use it. You will most likely forget that it is spent and try
to spend it again a few months later.
If you do not want to use your gift card right away, you can save it until you
actually need something and use it at that time. This will give you ample
opportunity to lose it or misplace it before it is spent. You can have lost or
stolen cards replaced as long as you have the number which is conveniently
located on the back of the card that you lost and the receipt which is normally
retained by the giver.
If you purchase an item with your gift card and later decided that you do not
want or need it, most stores will allow you to return it for a full refund in
the form of another gift card. In fact, the trend is to give all refunds in the
form of gift cards. You can then use the card to re-gift someone when you do not
know what to buy for a gift.
Gift cards have become so popular that some stores sell not only cards for their
own store, but cards for other stores as well. A wide variety of colorful
designs for all occasions are now available. Customers may have almost as much
trouble selecting the right gift card as they would in selecting the right gift.
The biggest gift of all that is given with gift cards is to retailers who make
about $8 billion per year in profit from unused and unspent gift cards.
Copyright 2008 Sheila
Moss
* * * * *
 Sheila
Moss is a columnist and free-lance writer from Nashville, Tennessee. Her column
includes funny stuff about Southern life, women's issues,
family matters or whatever she finds amusing.
She has written a monthly humor column for the Atlanta Woman Magazine,
and a weekly column for Smyrna AM, a community
supplement of the Tennessean, and for a number of other newspapers. She has been
published by Voyageur Press, McGraw Hill and
Guideposts Books, as
well as other publications, both print and online. She is
WebEditor for the National Society of Newspaper
Columnists and is an webmaster for HumorColumnist.com.
as well as Southern Humorists.com. Contact
Sheila
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