Gift vouchers can be nice presents, but if you think about it, you’re paying for the opportunity to lock in your money forcing the recipient to shop at that particular company. And more often than not, the recipient will then spent a little more than the value of the voucher in order to use it all. If you’d given them money instead, the outcome would have been the same, but this way the company gets your cash in advance. I have to hand it to whoever came up with the idea, it’s a capitalist’s wet dream!
And pre-orders (I’m specifically thinking of videogames here), this did make sense once upon a time when you were buying a physical copy that may have had limited stocks. But nowadays for digital pre-orders… what’s the point? You’re putting your trust in the company that the game will be polished from the start. At least with something like a Kickstarter, you’re helping to fund development of the game. But here what exactly do you get out of it? Maybe some additional pre-order cosmetics that’ll you use once? The concept is bizarre to me.
I FUCKING HATE GIFT VOUCHERS.
I have a little stack of vouchers for places I almost never visit, all expiring at random times in the next year or so. I have to remember what shops I have them for and make sure I spend money there before they expire. It’s just one more thing to worry about. “Oh, I have to buy this from Screwfix - do we have the vouchers for them? Maybe! How much? I don’t know, it doesn’t say on there. Has it expired yet? Not sure. Do they work online? Oh it’s not working maybe we used it and forgot to bin it”. And then the annoyance of spending money somewhere and forgetting to use vouchers. Why do people burden me with this and consider it a gift? Do I look like somebody who shops at John Lewis?!
At least in Canada they can’t legally expire. But yes, not only that, but you also have to buy more stuff and add your own money if you want to completely empty the gift card, as you’ll never be able to get to that exact amount.