More often now and days you see companies offering rechargeable gift cards in exchange for whatever crappy goods/services they offer, but lots of time there are all sorts of hidden fees, loopholes and penalty’s associated with gift cards that there wasn’t with old school gift certificates. Companies have found yet another way to pry our hard earned cash from our cold lifeless hands.

Back in the day when you forked over $50.00 bucks for a gift certificate you got that exact amount in return, sometimes there may have been a rare stipulation of having to use the exact same store or it would expire after some insane time period of 50 years or a nuclear winter. But fifty bucks was pretty much fifty bucks. It was written right on the front of the certificate usually in big fat letters, they couldn’t change it no matter how much they wanted to.

But time changes things and not always for the better…

Recently I purchased a 2.5 million dollar Providence Place Mall gift card for a family member, (What? It was just laying around taking up space and collecting dust ... what should I have done?) upon preparing the gift card for its temporary home inside $5.00 paper card that was forced upon me, I just happened to read the fine print on the back of the gift card.

The fine read something to the affect of “after each period of 90 days of inactivity, we will charge the account a 5% penalty.” Instantly disheartened I decided to read it again and sure enough I was right, I was so disgusted I felt like I wanted to kick a puppy!

How dare they dip their grubby ass corporate hands into the present that I purchased with my hard earned money because this person is not spending it “fast enough” by their standard? What the hell is that you want to force people to buy your left over holiday swill?

Because there is no marking anywhere on the card which indicates the undeniable value of the certificate and they control the value of the account with a number and some corporate money leaching software, they feel they reserve the right to skim off the top and setup rules on how quickly you MUST spend this present. Asshats.

I just checked my wallet and I still have a gift certificate from 2001 that I intend to spend at some point. I just don’t get to the bunny ranch in Las Vegas as often as I wish and guess what, its still effing valid. Boobies for everyone!!!

The obvious alternative to this gift card scandal is to give people cash.

One theoretical problem with giving someone cold hard cash (which Nicole will argue does actually decrease in value after a long period of time – I’ll save you the typing) as a present is most of the time is you don’t spend that money on something “enjoyable”, but rather its spent the first time you need it and it’s handy.

The way I see it -- having electricity in my house was pretty fucking enjoyable and who doesn’t enjoy free tic-tacs and yoo-hoo every once in a while. Really?

Another possible problem with giving cash is that most of the time when someone is handed cash it can feel thoughtless. Well I have news for you - gift cards aren’t the result of a rigorous thought process either.

Lets see: I know Jenny is a woman and this store sells things that women like to wear … hmmm … BINGO … I’ll get Jenny a gift card!

Not a lot of thought in that one either Einstein.

The moral of the story here is cash is good. Everybody likes it and It totally smells good. Don’t be a currency hater. Give Cash -- unless you don’t like the person, then give giftcards.

Happy Holidays.