Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Secondhand Gift Cards

I just got back from Uniqlo. Last year I bought M some clothes, which of course she didn't like (because I really am just good at picking out t shirts...), but no worries because I returned them all for a gift card. She's been wanting a new pair of pants so I told her I'd meet her there after work. I got there early and decided to wait on line and just check and make sure how much was on the card. Maybe $160? So the checkout lady swipes the card and gets an error message. I'm starting to sweat bullets. I have no other proof that this card has money on it. She tries to hand me the card and tell me it has nothing on it, and I'm like It has $150 to $160 dollars on it! Like my mom likes to say, believe you me! So the lady sees I mean business, and the third person to help her finally just punches the card's number in and it comes up $158. Phew! But it got me thinking that I need to tuck a receipt in with a gift card, whether it's from a return or a gift, because I'm a paper not plastic kind of gal.

Then I handed her another gift card. This one, however, I got on eBay. I knew I was going to Uniqlo this week so I searched for gift cards, and there was only one for $50. The minimum bid was $39.99 and I ended up being the winner. No, it's not another acre of land in Arizona, but still. $10 off of a $50 purchase is pretty good. After Christmas eBay is flooded with iTunes gift cards. I'm all over that, believe you me!

3 comments:

Esme said...

I had a close call on this gift card thing as well. Same situation where nothing came up when the salesperson swiped it. It was a big amount so I was freaking out until she keyed in the number and 'found' the money.

From then on I keep my gift card receipts with the cards just in case.

PiggyBankBlues said...

good idea :)

Plastic Cards said...

I don't understand that why are you talking about like this...?
This is good stick of pants but why you want to handover this for gift card.?