Posted 1 year, 5 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 6 hours, 27 minutes ago by Abraham Lincoln.

Gift cards are up to no good again. 

An outfit called BestShoppingRewards is sending an email offering a free gift card, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.  Get free stuff! All you have to do is agree to their privacy policy and terms & conditions. This sounds harmless, right?

Per the LA Times: “The privacy policy of BestShoppingRewards says the company will lay claim to your name, address, phone number, e-mail address, gender and birth date.  It also says that they may share this information with other third-party businesses that may have no relationship to BestShoppingRewards.com in order to bring you special retail opportunities through direct mail, e-mail and telemarketing.”

It gets a great deal messier. You end up providing a ton of info, and agreeing to be contacted by these marketers. The end result is that you’ve provided a ton of marketers a way to work around the government-run Do Not Call registry, and then you gave them all of your contact information. All because of the allure of a free gift card.

Down with gift cards! Up with Original Gift Card!

Posted 1 year, 5 months, 3 weeks, 6 days, 3 hours, 45 minutes ago by Abraham Lincoln.

Legislation was recently passed affording the holders of gift cards more protection.  Finally, gift cards don’t stink so bad? 

Let’s go to the highlights!

• An inactivity fee cannot be charged until the card has not been used for 12 months (wow, that long?)
• Gift cards cannot expire for at least 5 years. (But after five years, they self-destruct!)
• No more than one fee (of any kind) can be charged to the cardholder in a single month. (the same fee, month after month does get boring!)
• Information printed on the card must disclose fees and expiration date and provide a toll-free phone number or website where you can get more information. (great way to spend an evening!)
• A one-time fee can be charged when you buy the card. (whew, now that is consumer protection)

So in case you weren’t keeping score, you can still be charged an inactivity fee, your card can still expire, you can be charged a purchase fee and it’s your responsibility to understand the legalese on the back of your card.  And there’s still no protection if the business closes or goes bankrupt (Circuit City?).

We can only imagine the amount of lobbying that went on from both sides during the creation of this mess.  The only lobby that wasn’t consulted was cash.  Because, until now, no one voiced the virtues of cash giving and receiving like we do. 

There’s one more caveat: Under the new gift card rules, the physical card can have an expiration date, but not your money. So if your card expires and there’s still money left on it, you will have to muster up the courage and about thirty uninterrupted minutes, call the card company, navigate their Byzantine voicemail system, maybe get transferred over to India or Nepal, and ask them to send you a new card. Best of luck!

Remember: Cash is Better!

Posted 1 year, 6 months, 1 week, 18 hours, 29 minutes ago by Abraham Lincoln.

Are American consumers truly under assault from something as innocuous as prepackaged deli meat? We say yes! Did you know it’s much less expensive to simply walk up to the deli counter and have them freshly slice and package your deli meat?

But the rabbit hole goes much deeper. Word has it that credit card companies like American Express and Visa are selling pre-loaded credit cards that act as a sort of gift card for the recipient. Sounds great, right? Spend it anywhere you like; this sounds superior to the normal store gift card. However, the cards cost $3.50 - $4.00 to purchase, and some tack on $2.50 monthly fees. Bye bye, gift card balance! And some merchants will reject cards bearing less than the price of what you’re buying. Ben Franklin just turned over in his grave!

Viva la real green American cash!

Read more about The 10 Ways You’re Getting Ripped Off here.