...to think it's pretty outrageous that gift cards expire?

[MackerelOfFact]

And to be surprised that people waste their money on them?

I received a £50 Ticketmaster for a significant birthday about 15 months ago. I decided I would put it towards either a production of my favourite ballet, or Wimbledon tickets. I was unsuccessful getting either last year, so logged on yesterday to try again for this year's Nutcracker tickets, only to find that my voucher had disappeared from my account. I Googled and eventually found, tucked under many sub-menus, the 'terms and conditions' that the vouchers expire one year after purchase and cannot be reinstated or extended. Not one year after activation, not one year after last use, but one year after purchase - bearing in mind that the person using the vouchers will not be the same person who bought them, this seems even more stupid.

Obviously it's partly my own fault for not checking first and using them within the 12 months, but I am pretty livid that a relative has effectively donated £50 to a company with a turnover of about £7 billion in aid of my birthday. I am so embarrassed. I obviously can't tell them so I will probably end up buying tickets out of my own pocket and pretending I used the voucher.

I appreciate that companies might need to know for accounting purposes when they can expect to supply the services due, but quite frankly if they can't afford to supply gift vouchers then they are not obliged to do so. Nobody is forcing them to sell them.

I received National Theatre Tokens for the same birthday and according to their website they never expire.

Fully expecting to be told I am being unreasonable, but just wanted to warn anyone thinking of buying gift vouchers this Xmas to a) check how long they last, b) let the recipient know, and c) consider giving cash instead.

The gift experience ones are even worse. My DS got one for his 18th birthday. Red letter day or something. It expired in 6 months. Which of course, he didn't notice. It was a generous present too...about £100

I read an interview with a woman who had set up one of those businesses and she said if everyone who had a voucher actually used it then the business would have gone bust. She'd set it up knowing that a huge percentage of vouchers would never get used before they expired.

Someone up thread mentioned House of Fraser - they have quite strict terms and conditions with their gift cards.

If you order more than one item online and use a gift card but have to top it up with extra payment (i.e. credit or debit card) then you send part of the order back but keep some of it they will use the credit/ debit card first. The gift card also then becomes unusable in store and becomes online only.

I went round and round in circles for quite a while before I was actually able to spend the gift card. It ended up costing HOF more money because I kept using their free delivery/ returns service to order things just to get round this stupid rule.
Customer services on the phone were a joke but the staff in store (who had no idea this rule exists) were lovely about it.
I've read a thread about it here too so I know I'm not the only one who's had this experience.

chocolate was that the woman who was on the first series or so of dragons den? What a crap attitude to your customers.

What's sneaky is Liberty issuing "vouchers" in the form of lovely, silver pebbles that are far too nice to spend...

The gift experiences are terrible for not having availability or no longer having the service in your area.
I hate giving cash to my younger cousins so stick to amazon as it's easy for them to use.

One year is a pathetic amount of time to give you especially as if it was bought by someone to give you for Christmas, it would have expired by next Christmas.

Amazon GV are better they give you 10 years.

Eughhh this happened to me a 50 pound voucher in a high street shop my own fault for not gettin round to using it but still ! May as well have set fire to fifty pound !

One tip though if you look on the back at the small print on a lot of high street ones they are 18/24 months from date of last use / balance equiry so if you haven't seen anything you want to buy in the shop ask them to run through a balance equiry and this "resets" the time .

Itsnice - I had exactly the same thing! I wonder if it's the same salon. I too have never been there now and never would so they lost a potential customer for the sake of a manicure that someone had paid for.

And forgot to say OP YANBU at all. Companies must love them. I wonder what percentage goes unspent through them being lost / forgotten about / expiring.

Percentage of total money spent on gift cards I mean

I bought DP £500 of gift experiences one year. Things he'd always wanted to do. Took over a year to save for them all. Then he broke his knee and that was it, all the money gone. He didn't get to do a single one. He was going to keep the vouchers for 9 months and see if he felt able to do any then but they said their insurance wouldn't cover him. Never again!

Anchor That's awful, what bastards for not honouring them. I hope your DP is better now.

I don't understand why companies seem to imply they're doing you a massive favour by letting you use their vouchers when you've actually already paid them the money. It's ridiculous. I started this thread to vent but I'm even more angry now, some of these stories are just unbelievable.

I actually wondered if it was legal for them to have an expiry date, but apparently it is, as long as it's written somewhere. A relative of mine once bought me a gift card for Next. And I know it was really well-meaning, but I never shop in Next. I knew there was an expiry date, so I kept going in and looking around and never seeing anything I'd want, but the end felt forced to buy something because it was going to run out. I think I bought the least offensive item I could find - a belt or something.

Went to garden centre today and used the national garden centre vouchers my sister gave me for my birthday nearly 10 years ago!! They got lost in the bottom of a drawer. Knew I had them but had no idea where they were till I came across them last week. Did have a bannatynes spa day expire on me after only 9 months though last year. Don't really like vouchers as a gift except maybe Amazon vouchers as I know I will use them for my kindle.