Many would argue that the most important piece of information about a gift certificate is its expiration date. There is much merit behind
this argument. Let's consider a scenario to back up this supposition. Imagine your nephew is graduating from college and you decide to
give her a giftcertificate from Nordstrom.com or a gift certificate from Towerrecords.com or even multiple gift certificates from
apple.com or itunes.com. There is little doubt that this nephew of yours will be very happy to receive this gift. But what would happen if
the graduate decides to take a quick vacation to Mexico after leaving college which somehow turns into a year-long party adventure. Sounds
like the nephew will be having a blast but it also sounds like sephora.com or Nordstrom.com or itunes or golfballs.com or bluenile.com or
macys.com or tower records.com will be pocketing the money for the gift you gave them!!
That is right, there are many "certificates of the gift" (as I jokingly call them) that expire after a certain amount of time. What I am
exposing to you is one of the oldest secrets of the retail industry. Fahter's day gifts, Christmas gifts and gifts of all other kinds have
been rendered useless by the unforgiving machine that we all know as: TIME! And guess who is laughing all the way to the bank. It is the
merchants.
So please do me and the entire staff of giftcertificateguide.com a favor and be sure to check on the expiration date of the gift
certificates that you give.
What else is important regarding gift certificate giving? It is important to consider the cash-back option of the merchant from which you
are giving. What do I mean by cash-back-option? Let me explain it by means of another example: Let's say you give your mother the
wonderful gift of a Nordstrom gift certificate or an itunes gift certificate. If the certificate is for $100 and she decides to buy a
sweater which costs a total of $89, what is she going to get for the remaining $11? I would argue that it is important that she does not
receive another gift certificate for $11. Honestly, what is worse than an $11 giftcertificate other than having to spend the fourth of
July in Canada!! So now you see what I am talking about regarding cash-back. Make sure that your merchant will do the right thing and give
your mother $11 in cash versus some useless gift certificate she will probably end up losing.
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