Giftcards are not cash either!

Unless there is an obvious incentive to purchase a giftcard -- critically for a store/vendor which you already have near-term plans to spend money at -- then avoid them. Eg. I recently purchased one which had an effective 20% savings due to some holiday promotion and will be done spending the balance some time next week. Even then I barely decided to do so.

I don't know how we got conned into trading our money for giftcard balances at par.