Gift cards - they suck, folks. I don't get the point of gift cards as a standalone gift for someone. Like, if someone gets me a $25 gift card and I get them a $25 gift card then what the fuck was the point?? We're comfortably sitting at a net zero exchange, we could've just kept our cash and been better off. All we've done at that point is limit where we can spend our money to a single location. If you bought one of those Visa Vanilla cards, congratulations you just paid an activation fee to give them money, but wooptiedoo they can spend it whereverrrrrr. W H Y?
To make matters worse, there were about $3 B I L L I O N in unused gift cards last year. That's recorded as breakage revenue after enough time has lapsed to get the liability off the balance sheet too. That's free fucking revenue that no one provided services or goods for. W H Y A R E W E D O I N G T H I S?
WHAT'S THE FUCKING POINT? THEY'RE JUST SO VAPID AND MEANINGLESS, I CAN'T FUCKING STAND IT. OH MY GOD.
This is what always gets me about gift cards. I always end up having to spend money because you're never able to hit exactly $10, $25, or whatever else is on there. Making me spend money isn't a gift, it's a curse. If you don't spend the whole thing it feels wasteful.
The gift hierarchy for me goes: Any gift -> a nice card -> nothing -> gift card
That's literally why they go unused. No one wants to go through the hassle of providing two separate payment methods for one transaction and having to explain that the balance is low on one but to finish it off and use the other payment method for the rest. It's so annoying. Just CashApp me $25 to put into my bank account and I won't have to worry about that, haha.