I'm familiar with a story of an ecommerce site that offered a discount on digitally delivered gift cards to encourage holiday gifting. But they didn't think to prevent people from buying more gift cards with those gift cards.
Nearly 20 years ago there was a large supermarket in the UK that had two 'points' offers on that intersected on bananas. Cue an enterprising few to buy all the bananas (with banana points), then quickly use all their points on other items.
My school ended up with a heap of free bananas from a parent :D
I have no personal experience but my waiter and restaurant owner friends seem to think that gift cards are also a good way to skim some money from your employer while traveling. Buy some bread and peanut butter at the store, get a gift card and a drink at a restaurant. Or if your per diem is big enough, go all out and get a meal and a gift card.
My company doesn’t require receipts for anything under $50. $25 meal and $25 gift card. Not that I would ever actually do that. Besides the ethical issues, it’s not worth risking my job over piddling amounts like that.
Policies like minimum amount before receipt don't make a whole lot of sense in a lot of cases, since they incentivize unethical people to run up the tab to the minimum as much as possible.
I've worked at both kinds of companies (receipt and reimbursement vs straight per diem based on location) and much preferred the one that handed me my per diem as cash in an envelope before the trip started. Less bookkeeping on the company's end, and if I decide to be frugal on the trip for whatever reason I've just rewarded myself with a small bonus. Seems like everyone's incentives are aligned in that case.
It is sadly too common for people to feel vindicated and/or thrilled anytime they manage to "win" like this, akin to the so-called beggar mentality, where any material gain to oneself regardless of actual need is considered a positive.
These kinds of people like to think of themselves as smart when in reality they are just selfish.
Any action that cannot sustainably be extended to everyone else in the world should be considered suspect as to whether it's actually good.
I caught a guy doing this, probably skimmed $400 a week for years. People do crazy stuff... One group of CEs I knew were renting apartments and AirBnbing themselves.
I don't see renting and AirBnB'ing as completely unethical. The difference in lodging costs theoretically form the cost of providing liquidity free from rent agreements.
It becomes really unethical when the drafter of these policies also benefit from it.
Many companies will deduct money from gift cards at regular intervals if they aren't used for some arbitrary period, so it can be worse than 0 interest even if the card is used by the recipient.
I think they are brilliant, it saves me the trouble of thinking what to get and you also avoid getting the same gift which the other person already has.
With a gift card the recipient can get what they want.
Steve Wozniak of Apple fame used to get sheets of $2 bills turned into pads with perforations so he could tear off the bills to use for transactions (or just spend a whole uncut sheet). Fun gag.
A bit off topic, but what’s her source for Eisenhower dollars? I discovered them by chance at a bank one day but haven’t been able to find them at another bank since, while $2 bills are in stock pretty regularly.
She is a money nerd and casual collector. Working as a teller in college, she was fascinated by unusual currency and bonds, etc. (As late as 1999 she would get old folks turning in WW2 era victory stamps/bond.)
Basically, when we go somewhere new, we look for bank branches or sometimes supermarkets that cater to old people and ask for weird coins. Depending on the bank, tellers sometimes end up carrying these in their drawers for weeks and are happy to unload them. Locally, they know her and sometimes save coins. You develop a sense for banks that are more productive for this -- a more modern bank have staff who don't know what nickels are! :)
Sometimes you get lucky. A few years ago, my wife and my son came back with about $200 of eisenhowers, including a few silver ones. They basically bought $1200 worth of coins for $200! Some kid/grandkid probably turned in grandmas stuff.
Yes. And the gifting party doesn't have to even bother pretending they care enough about said recipient to try and figure what that person would like / could like and don't know it yet.
I don't see how any of that is brilliant. Might as well write a check. Or just don't bother with a gift at all. It's what I do with most people I don't care enough about.
Clearly you are one of those people who takes gifting very seriously, some dont. Its brilliant because its the right product for people who want to give something but dont have time or dont feel comfortable asking probing questions about what the recipient likes.
Gift cards demonstrate a modicum of forethought/planning, albeit on the order of a Hallmark card. Cash says "this is what I found in my wallet on the drive here". Check falls somewhere in between, but with the added inconvenience of the recipient having to figure out how to deposit it.
Gift cards have the added benefit to the gifter that, upon being spent, the giftee has a chance to associate them with the purchased good or service. Cash and check, being added to an amorphous fungible pool, confer no such benefit for the gifter.
What I haven't figured out is where on these axes lies a printed-out QR code granting ownership of a Bitcoin wallet. Unfortunately Google tells me these actually exist: https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/holiday-design/
Before cheap plastic gift cards existed, we used to just hand over cash and write in the card "get a nice book and let me know when you do" or something. So that's hopefully a little less tacky ;)
When I became old enough that more distant relatives didn't really know what to buy me, they'd send £5 and a request that I spend it on clothes, a book, a day out with friends or whatever.
Usually, they'd send a banknote in perfect condition, or a cheque if it was by post.
I'm now too old for these gifts, but my youngest sibling gets the same instructions, and a future-dated transfer to his bank account.
> I guess it depends on the culture, some dont like getting direct cash.
East Asian cultures tend to stick to the "red envelope of cash".
I'm curious how much businesses have had inroads into swaying cultures to believe that gifts and gift cards are more desirable than cash. Economists historically have talked about how gifts are frequently inefficient uses of money because there is value loss when it isn't the most desired item at the time.
My Mom wants gift cards for gift occasions. But she also sends out gift cards for birthdays or whatever. She doesn’t understand why my siblings and I think this is so funny. She sends us a $25 gift card for our birthday and we send her a $25 gift card from the same place for her birthday.
For reasons I don't entirely understand, a large number of people think that giving a gift card is "more polite" than checks or cash. Even though you are literally giving just a worse version of cash that can only be used in one store.
Not everything is for sale. Things can be freely given that you wouldn't, and in some cases are not allowed to, sell.
But even beyond that some gifts that could be bought are valuable to the recipient disproportionately to what it cost for the giver to purchase them, for a variety of reasons.
> But even beyond that some gifts that could be bought are valuable to the recipient disproportionately to what it cost for the giver to purchase them, for a variety of reasons.
My point is that those are the same reasons that recipients value gift cards more than the same cash amount (though to a lesser extent).
Many people buy others gifts, often with little care or thought, just for the sake of giving a gift,
not because they necessarily want to.
I personally hate receiving gift cards or commodity gifts. I would rather receive a thoughtful gift (even just a hand-written message) or no gift at all. I don’t want your item or your money, I want your time or your thoughts.
Not to mention that after receiving your gift, I become obligated to give you an equally thoughtless gift. They say it’s the thought that counts, but it seems like that’s exactly what is missing most of the time! I want to skip the business transaction and just get to the part where we appreciate each other.
That said, I’m still not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, but that is my honest preference.
I'm mostly the same. My family doesn't really do gifts any more, showing up in one place to cook and eat together is enough.
For my wife and myself, we usually just 'gift' something like a short holiday or a nice thing we'd been meaning to get. But it's kind of abstract when the money belongs to both of us anyway - the main gift is that the giver goes to more effort in planning it, or gives up some of their own preferences in deference to what the receiver would prefer.
Obligated gift giving is pretty annoying as you say. Much nicer to see something and think of it on the spur of the moment.
Honestly, just give everybody liquor chocolates and the occasional bottle of scotch, and you will be fondly remembered long after you are gone. It's not thoughtless. It's a strategy.
Early in our marriage my wife said that we shouldn’t exchange gifts. I thought she was crazy and would changer her mind, but over the past 25 years neither of us has ever purchased a gift for the other. It has actually turned out great. Now I don’t have to spend any time thinking about what she might want. She’s happy, I’m happy, capitalism is not so happy ;-)
The one interesting thing is that I don’t like buying gifts for other people anymore. If I’m not going to buy my wife a gift, why would I buy you a gift when you are no where near as important to me as she is?
> She’s happy, I’m happy, capitalism is not so happy ;-)
Financial security is a very important factors in marriages. As long as both parties are happy with forgoing gifts, it's a far better long-term gift to each other to be fiscally responsible to the future of the family unit.
That said, there's an onslaught of marketing to convince you to change your mind.
I'm a patient at a (physical) rehab place, and my case manager is expecting. With COVID-19, any gifts like baby clothes seem too germy, and the best I can think of is a gift card that she can sanitize. Better than paper cash, and we don't know her well enough to know what she needs.
Between lost cards, the obvious money laundering and tax avoidance grifts, etc, it's a pretty absurd instrument.