The whole gift card game is a big scam.
Between lost cards, the obvious money laundering and tax avoidance grifts, etc, it's a pretty absurd instrument.
Between lost cards, the obvious money laundering and tax avoidance grifts, etc, it's a pretty absurd instrument.
My school ended up with a heap of free bananas from a parent :D
These kinds of people like to think of themselves as smart when in reality they are just selfish.
Any action that cannot sustainably be extended to everyone else in the world should be considered suspect as to whether it's actually good.
This rules out lots of things that society accepts as fine. Although perhaps that's your intent.
I've worked at both kinds of companies (receipt and reimbursement vs straight per diem based on location) and much preferred the one that handed me my per diem as cash in an envelope before the trip started. Less bookkeeping on the company's end, and if I decide to be frugal on the trip for whatever reason I've just rewarded myself with a small bonus. Seems like everyone's incentives are aligned in that case.
I caught a guy doing this, probably skimmed $400 a week for years. People do crazy stuff... One group of CEs I knew were renting apartments and AirBnbing themselves.
It becomes really unethical when the drafter of these policies also benefit from it.
https://www.thebalance.com/new-gift-card-rules-for-expiratio...
But even beyond that some gifts that could be bought are valuable to the recipient disproportionately to what it cost for the giver to purchase them, for a variety of reasons.
My point is that those are the same reasons that recipients value gift cards more than the same cash amount (though to a lesser extent).
With a gift card the recipient can get what they want.
I don't see how any of that is brilliant. Might as well write a check. Or just don't bother with a gift at all. It's what I do with most people I don't care enough about.
Giving cheque/cash feels tacky to me.
Gift cards have the added benefit to the gifter that, upon being spent, the giftee has a chance to associate them with the purchased good or service. Cash and check, being added to an amorphous fungible pool, confer no such benefit for the gifter.
What I haven't figured out is where on these axes lies a printed-out QR code granting ownership of a Bitcoin wallet. Unfortunately Google tells me these actually exist: https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/holiday-design/
Usually, they'd send a banknote in perfect condition, or a cheque if it was by post.
I'm now too old for these gifts, but my youngest sibling gets the same instructions, and a future-dated transfer to his bank account.
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3akq2q/e...
Basically, when we go somewhere new, we look for bank branches or sometimes supermarkets that cater to old people and ask for weird coins. Depending on the bank, tellers sometimes end up carrying these in their drawers for weeks and are happy to unload them. Locally, they know her and sometimes save coins. You develop a sense for banks that are more productive for this -- a more modern bank have staff who don't know what nickels are! :)
Sometimes you get lucky. A few years ago, my wife and my son came back with about $200 of eisenhowers, including a few silver ones. They basically bought $1200 worth of coins for $200! Some kid/grandkid probably turned in grandmas stuff.
East Asian cultures tend to stick to the "red envelope of cash".
I'm curious how much businesses have had inroads into swaying cultures to believe that gifts and gift cards are more desirable than cash. Economists historically have talked about how gifts are frequently inefficient uses of money because there is value loss when it isn't the most desired item at the time.
I personally hate receiving gift cards or commodity gifts. I would rather receive a thoughtful gift (even just a hand-written message) or no gift at all. I don’t want your item or your money, I want your time or your thoughts.
Not to mention that after receiving your gift, I become obligated to give you an equally thoughtless gift. They say it’s the thought that counts, but it seems like that’s exactly what is missing most of the time! I want to skip the business transaction and just get to the part where we appreciate each other.
That said, I’m still not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, but that is my honest preference.
The one interesting thing is that I don’t like buying gifts for other people anymore. If I’m not going to buy my wife a gift, why would I buy you a gift when you are no where near as important to me as she is?
Financial security is a very important factors in marriages. As long as both parties are happy with forgoing gifts, it's a far better long-term gift to each other to be fiscally responsible to the future of the family unit.
That said, there's an onslaught of marketing to convince you to change your mind.
If you do buy clothes, coordinate with others to get clothes for various sizes/ages. But cash and a suggestion of clothes is probably better anyway.
For my wife and myself, we usually just 'gift' something like a short holiday or a nice thing we'd been meaning to get. But it's kind of abstract when the money belongs to both of us anyway - the main gift is that the giver goes to more effort in planning it, or gives up some of their own preferences in deference to what the receiver would prefer.
Obligated gift giving is pretty annoying as you say. Much nicer to see something and think of it on the spur of the moment.