In case you haven’t been paying attention to multiple consumer warnings about gift cards, consider this your final warning. Best Buy reported a $43 million profit for fiscal year 2006 thanks to gift cards that haven’t been used in two years. Seriously people. Wake up, smell the coffee and check your wallets. Best Buy isn’t the only retailer making a killing off unused gift cards.
A lot of those gift cards get purchased around the holiday season and tons go unused and lost, which results in Best Buy keeping your money for good. Retailers apparently can’t report revenue from gift cards until they’ve either been used or a long period of time has passed since the date of purchase. So this holiday, take inventory and check out the gift cards you’ve accumulated – you might have some serious cash laying around.
Retailers profit from unused gift cards [Yahoo! News]