I have always felt that gift cards are a lousy present.
- There is something cold and impersonal about giving someone a fake credit card with money on it, money that can only be used for one particular thing.
If you give someone cash for a present, they can spend that cash however they choose. If you give them a gift card for an online retailer, they have very little recourse. They have to spend that card at the one store, or else it has no value. Last year my brother gave me a gift card to the local HVAC contractor, which I thought was a terrible gift. This isn’t even the HVAC business that I choose to handle all of my work, it was some new company I never heard of before. I looked on the company website, and was delighted to find that this company sold both new and refurbished HVAC equipment. They did operate a storefront, which had hundreds of different pieces of HVAC equipment on display, and for sale. I took my gift card to the shop, with the intent of finding a nice dehumidifier. I actually wanted an air purifier as well as a dehumidifier, but I didn’t know how it would cost to buy both at once. I found one model that combined both of those devices, which meant it purified the air as well as removing the excess moisture. It was a little more than I wanted to pay, but because of the gift card I got this air purifier for a very reasonable price.