Transferrable Christmas Gift Cards

Since it's that time of year for giving and sharing and since I recently just had a situation were I wished that something like this existed, I figured now is the perfect time to bring this one up.



Before I begin, I don't believe it exists yet. I don't know why because it seems very logical. However, I only searched for about 15 minutes when I was at work so I wouldn't say that my search was thorough. With that said, if someone can find this, I would love to know where it is.



The Gift Card that can be transferred!!!



Gift cards have become more and more popular over the years as a way to give without giving something the person wouldn't like. They're actually lifesavers in tough situations where your mind just goes blank. Billions of dollars worth of gift cards are sold every year. However, something like one billion dollars worth of gift cards go unused each year and that number is growing. That's insane!

Well, the day after Christmas, I became enlightened. I received 4 $50 gift cards this year. One of them I spent $7 for food at the mall. Several hours later, I used anotehr one for a pair of $40 sneakers. Another one I used for gas for the car and the last one I used $40 in taking Melissa out for some dinner. Out of the $200 I received in gift cards, I know have $68 left. However, that money is divided into four cards. Three of the cards have under $10 on them and the other one has close to $40.

Now, you might think that that is no big problem but in fact it is. Sure, you can go to stores and give them al four cards for them to swipe but not only does this hold up the other people in line, some stores either haven't taught their employees how to do it or their registers just can't do it. Another case in point is online shopping. Sure, you can use gift cards but I have yet to see a site that allows you to use multiple ones. For instance, Melissa went online the other day to purchase something for our upcoming wedding. She had several gift cards she was going to use. So, she entered the first gift card number and was about to go to the next when the website (a very prominent one) decided that just one card was good enough and charged the $100 purchase to the $30 gift card. The whole transaction went through! So, we got $100 worth of stuff for only $30. Of course, the next day, the website stated that there were insufficient funds but there have been other times that it has worked for us when we clearly didn't have the money on the card.

My random idea for today, albiet quite obvious but maybe not lucrative for gift card distributors, is to make gift cards transferrable. By that I mean that if you have two Visa Gift Cards and you want to take the remaining balance on one and bring it over, you should be able to do it. Essentially, a gift card is just cash thrown into a piece of plastic so why not treat it as such. I guess this hasn't been done because of potential losses to the gift card distributors? Maybe a possible solution is to charge a small transfer fee to offset the loss. I have no idea but I think it would be a great idea and save millions of people the hassle of dealing with multiple gift cards. Not only would it save on the consumption of plastic but it would also save a little space in your wallet.

So, what do you all think? Good idea or a load of crap? Let me know.

Happy Holidays and Hassle Free Shopping.

Regards,

Bob