Another Gift Card Down the Drain
A couple of years ago I wrote about a situation in which I was planning on redeeming a gift card given to me for my birthday only to find out the balance of the card had been whittled down to close to nothing and basically useless by monthly card management “fees”. Apparently I did not learn from that experience as I seem to have run into another situation where I am getting swindled out of yet another gift card balance, this time at Borders. I recently (within the last year, I think) received a Borders gift card from someone (I do not remember who). I was not really in a rush to redeem it as they apparently have a “never expires” policy on their gift cards. Well tonight whilst attempting to redeem my Borders gift card online, I found out it was yet again, without balance.
Now wait a minute. I am pretty sure I had not spent it as it had been sitting on my desk for the past however long waiting for me to actually do something with it.
I decided to give the Borders “gift card” customer support a call. So I called and found out the scoop. According the them, and unbeknownst to me and most likely my unsuspecting gift giver, the card had never actually been “activated” or “loaded” with any balance. Which meant, yep, good ol’ Skowronek gets shafted again out of a gift card birthday present.
Moral of the story (I believe in Tennessee or Texas), fool me once … shame on you … the fool me … can’t get fooled again. Perhaps I should not accept any more gift cards as gifts, they appear to be bad karma.
By the way, if any of you reading this did happen to give me a Borders gift card recently, please let me know so I can track down whether or not you also, are getting the shaft (having been charged and not actually having received anything in return.)
June 2nd, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Man, that would tick me off too! Maybe I better ask about hidden fees the next time I go to purchase a giftcard. I promise it wasn’t me who gave you the gift card :-).