to think it is just not safe to buy a shop gift voucher anymore?

[ToeCap]

With all the recent closures, the first thing the shops stop is honouring the gift vouchers.

Poor people losing their jobs though.

Captain, Toecap, actually it probably is better for a business to sell stock rather than vouchers. When they sell stock they get profit. When they sell vouchers they get cash in, but a liability the same size (the accounting rules don't allow them to discount that to the actual cost of the goods you will eventually buy). So when they are looking at assets -v- liabilities, to see if they are solvent and can continue trading, stock sold will contribute to the assets but vouchers are basically dead weight and don't contribute to the profit.

It is to avoid carrying over those liabilities for years and years that companies put an expiry date on things - plus, of course, there are a good few that will not get used and that is then a liability wiped out.

I have no idea how or why WHSmiths exists. Stationery is expensive compared to supermarkets, and books have poor range and uninformative staff compared with other high street retailers, and expensive too. They basically feel like airport shops.

DS has a Xmas present HMV voucher that he now cant use.

It seems wrong to me. They have been paid, so they should accept the voucher.

DH was made redundant just before Xmas so no question of a lack of sympathy here, but the fact is that this is theft. They have taken the money but are refusing to supply the goods!

Following previous instances of this years ago (this not accepting vouchers when a firm goes into either administration or bankruptcy) I stopped buying specific vouchers back then.

I always give either generic book tokens to be used in any bookshop, iTunes cards (coz there's no way that's going under), or cold hard cash.

Captain, Toecap, actually it probably is better for a business to sell stock rather than vouchers. When they sell stock they get profit. When they sell vouchers they get cash in, but a liability the same size (the accounting rules don't allow them to discount that to the actual cost of the goods you will eventually buy). So when they are looking at assets -v- liabilities, to see if they are solvent and can continue trading, stock sold will contribute to the assets but vouchers are basically dead weight and don't contribute to the profit

That's exactly it, and it's why it's generally 12 months. My company sells vouchers which last a year - if someone contacts me within the year and asks for an extension, I always give it, but if I don't hear from them the voucher is classed as expired. This won't change.

PS and it is made very, very clear for both the purchaser and the recipient and on the website that this is the case.

Ah ok, I get your drift about the 'actual goods' versus vouchers bit

I have no idea how or why WHSmiths exists.

Me neither sleepy. I bought an overpriced office calendar a few weeks ago simply to activate the card. Sadly, my aunt is old enough to remember when they were a proper bookshop rather than the pusher of chocolate bars and keeps giving them money.

btw this in no way an attack on WH Smith staff who just do what the CEO and management tell them. The CEO was praised in the Sunday Times a couple of months ago for what looked like a cynical exercise in juggling figures rather than building the business.

Surprise, surprise, she's moving on to give customers what they don't want at another business. I forget her new berth. Perhaps she'll manage to close that one.

From my understanding, when a company is put into administration, people with vouchers become creditors alongside everyone else who is owed money or goods by the company. Creditors with unused vouchers end up pretty low in the pecking order, though, as the first duty of the administrators is to work out whether any part of the company can be revived and made profitable, sold on or stripped for assets and liquidated. Whatever they decide, the job of the administrators is to recover as much money as possible for creditors, with HMRC being pretty high up the priority list ahead of employees, lenders, landlords, suppliers etc

I do think this is an area where there is room for some legislation. People don't seem to realise that buying a gift voucher is basically loaning money to a company. When you borrow money there are endless warnings and forms, but when you lend it... nothing. It is also worth bearing in mind that if you paid for goods upfront and are awaiting delivery from a company that goes bust, you may well never see either the goods or the money again.

As soon as a company realises it has greater liabilities than assets it has to say so, and then, of course, everyone calls in their debts asap, and stops buying - so even companies that could in theory trade through things cannot survive.

There will probably be some creative soul soon who will set up a gift voucher scheme backed by insurance to ensure the gift keeps its value.

Cannot help but be absolutely certain worry that we are in for a triple dip, and that the main losers are going to be people like us.

I am another one who doesn't understand where WH Smith fits into the 'shops people want to go into' category. Everything in there can be bought cheaper somewhere else apart from the newspapers and magazines.

Our little WH Smith in town is staffed by lovely helpful people though. My Dad in his seventies loves the place so perhaps it's the retired people keeping it going.

I went into our local HMV this morning to collect something I had ordered in last week... the product has not arrived and the manager said the till would not allow him to refund it... only to give me 'store credit'. The poor man was so apologetic but it is not his fault, and I am sure he has bigger problems at the minute. DS and DD1 have £60 of HMV vouchers sitting here that are now useless too.

BUT... it would appear everyone is not quite so understanding, the police had to be called for people threatening staff and 'taking what they are owed' from the shelves

Also WH Smith... surely they must be next to go... so overpriced!

Confusion. I hadn't even thought of that.

YANBU.

It's very sad how many big names are going under, although it's a bit hypocritical of me to say so as I've never been a big shopper.

I wonder how much of the decline of the high street is to do with so many mothers having to work just to help pay the bills, and the extending of the retirement ages. There probably just aren't the number of people available to shop in towns during the main shopping week. It's perhaps not just price where they are losing out to the internet, but also convenience/necessity.

Re: Smiths. I always buy my diary from there, nowhere else does exactly the layout I like. I also always get the family calendar from there as I like the layout. :)

It was really shocking and quite sad. We live in a relatively quiet town too

Actually I get my calendar from there too. It's the family planner one with a column for everyone. Bloomin £5.99 though. It is pieces of paper FGS. But I do like the layout.

I can't see WHS lasting, and I wonder how Boots survives on the high street too.

The main reason I don't shop in town much is not price - it is the fact that parking is outrageously expensive. Our nearest town has about 5,000 inhabitants and a really limited shopping area (charity shops and antiques shops outnumber anything else) and it costs £2 to park for an hour. I have to find £2 in coins, too. Councils just shoot themselves in the foot - when, at Christmas, they made it free, the shops boomed. As it is, I drive to Taunton where the cost is the same but there are actually lots of shops.

Never liked the idea of vouchers anyway unless you knew for sure someone would shop there - they shouldn't be allowed to refuse the vouchers because it's been paid for by someone.

How does Holland and Barrett survive? There's never anyone in there and even with Gethin's buy one get one for 1p it's really expensive.

Ohtheconfusion, apparently a lot of people have been doing that, including a couple of my FB friends . One of them said they went to the till and politely offered the gift card, then when it was refused, walked out with the DVDs anyway ... it's not right, but when you have £50 of vouchers suddenly worthless, I am sympathetic. I feel so sorry for the staff, all the unemployed retail workers competing for very few jobs, they must be so worried.

I also don't quite know how the body shop survives either - their goods are always heavily discounted and even then they are expensive. They are also not as ethically and green as they like to think they are ...

Sparklingbrook Tue 15-Jan-13 13:36:15

It's the family planner one with a column for everyone. Bloomin £5.99 though. It is pieces of paper FGS. But I do like the layout.

I don't buy gift vouchers - either money or presents or occasional National Book Tokens. We still have £135 worth of National Garden Scheme vouchers left from our wedding which I need to spend, and an Argos voucher. I think Argos might be in trouble, so ought to spend it.