Gift Cards: Show Me the Money!
This holiday season, I’ve noticed an emerging trend in the uber popular gift card arena… incentives!
Typically, when buying a gift card for someone, I have to pay the face value of the gift I want to give. Now, I’m seeing companies start to offer some pretty good incentives to buy them. Knowing this, you could stretch your dollar even further by taking advantage of the various promotions out there, and cash in on the freebies.
Some of the offers I’ve seen lately include:
- Great Clips: Free haircut (~$20) when you buy a $100 gift card, a 20% return.
- Subway: Free six inch sandwich (~$5) when you buy a $25 gift card, a 20% return.
- Triple O’s: Free original burger (~$4) when you buy $20 in gift cards, a 20% return.
- Extreme Pita: Free $5 when you buy $20 in gift cards, a 25% return.
- Boston Pizza: Free pizza or pasta (~$10) when you buy $50 in gift cards, a 20% return.
These offers are pretty good, seeing as you get 20%+ more if you took advantage of any of them. Regardless of who they’re for (even yourself) you would earn above and beyond the face value of the gift card in cash or freebies — and who doesn’t love freebies?
The only draw back to this, however, is the reality that not all gift cards get used up. Even with the best intentions to use them in full, cards can get misplaced, plans can change, and in some cases, the balance can start to diminish automatically over time. As well, some of the freebies have heavy restrictions around them, making them even harder to take advantage of. So, giving a particular company money in advance for their services, could be a hard pill to swallow.
But, for things you know you’ll use up — like a Subway gift card — this could be a very rewarding incentive.
Next year, I’ll keep a better eye out for these gift card incentives when shopping — they could just sway my purchasing decision from one company to another, either for myself, or for someone else. My guess is, this trend will ramp up over the next few years, as companies realize the impact it can have on a consumer.
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Don’t forget, you don’t have to give the gift card as a gift, you can use it yourself. I was at a Boston Pizza to eat and the promotion you mentioned was advertised on a couple of posters in there.
So, after ordering I went to the till and purchased a gift card. Got the free meal voucher. Used it AND the gift card to cover our meals. About 1 minute of effort netted me a nice little discount on my bill.
Some people think it is:
1) unethical to get a benefit from a gift;
2) It is unethical to re-gift a gift card.
Others go to the opposite extreme and sell/trade their card on http://www.plasticjungle.com.
I think your absolutely right: good deal is a good deal.
i have hobby of collecting such gift cards.they are useful for me to save money or to gift my friends