Oct
30The Hidden Costs of Gift Cards
Tagged Under : Cards, Gift Cards
Gift cards are a great way to show your appreciation to someone. Next to cash, there is nothing that is quite as convenient. And with the holidays fast approaching, you can be sure that they will be distributed by millions.
But there are some caveats to using gift cards that most people don’t realize. While they do offer incredible flexibility and convenience, they also come with costs. First off, in order to be profitable they cost more than they are worth.
There are monthly fees charged against the card’s balance that usually kicks in, on average, six months after the card has been issued. American Express, for their part, recently dropped their monthly charges on its general-purpose gift cards.
A federal law has also been passed that will prohibit companies from charging fees on gift cards in the first 12 months of their issuance. That law however, will not go into effect until August 2010.
In the vast majority of cases store issued gift cards are different than bank issued gift cards. The

