Gift vouchers can be nice presents, but if you think about it, you’re paying for the opportunity to lock in your money forcing the recipient to shop at that particular company. And more often than not, the recipient will then spent a little more than the value of the voucher in order to use it all. If you’d given them money instead, the outcome would have been the same, but this way the company gets your cash in advance. I have to hand it to whoever came up with the idea, it’s a capitalist’s wet dream!
And pre-orders (I’m specifically thinking of videogames here), this did make sense once upon a time when you were buying a physical copy that may have had limited stocks. But nowadays for digital pre-orders… what’s the point? You’re putting your trust in the company that the game will be polished from the start. At least with something like a Kickstarter, you’re helping to fund development of the game. But here what exactly do you get out of it? Maybe some additional pre-order cosmetics that’ll you use once? The concept is bizarre to me.
The point of gift cards is that you have to spend it on something fun, not bills.
Yup gift cards are like money but with limited use. And sometimes expiration dates.
I think there’s significant portions if it that don’t get used at all, which is free money (profit) to the company. Or maybe they don’t count it as profit because people may use it, idk.
Boomers think it shows they actually "cared* 🤡
If they care enough about how I think they’d give cash. Or no gifts at all, because the concept of “I have to give a gift for …” Just makes me accumulate more things that I won’t use, coz most things I use I buy.
I do appreciate greatly when someone asks what I want and I can give them a list of things that need at the moment, or something I’d like to have bit feels like too much money to spend for the low amount of use I’d get. Buying random things when I can’t think of things has never worked in my favor.
Only case where I consider pre-ordering is if there’s a decent discount for doing it and I know that I’ll definitely want the game at launch (for example if most of my group of friends will be playing it at the same time).
I FUCKING HATE GIFT VOUCHERS.
I have a little stack of vouchers for places I almost never visit, all expiring at random times in the next year or so. I have to remember what shops I have them for and make sure I spend money there before they expire. It’s just one more thing to worry about. “Oh, I have to buy this from Screwfix - do we have the vouchers for them? Maybe! How much? I don’t know, it doesn’t say on there. Has it expired yet? Not sure. Do they work online? Oh it’s not working maybe we used it and forgot to bin it”. And then the annoyance of spending money somewhere and forgetting to use vouchers. Why do people burden me with this and consider it a gift? Do I look like somebody who shops at John Lewis?!
At least in Canada they can’t legally expire. But yes, not only that, but you also have to buy more stuff and add your own money if you want to completely empty the gift card, as you’ll never be able to get to that exact amount.
It is crazy. Reason why I never do it. I can’t find a single good reason to use gift cards instead of money.
And for digital game preorders? That’s even dumber. The publisher is not going to run out of bits, if you purchase after the launch, your digital game will be delivered all the same. But I guess corporate shills need to feel that they are helping the poor multi million corpo…
At the risk of doing some kind of ism, it’s weird that normal people do it.
I can see the merit giving them to someone who is a drug addict or otherwise mentally enfeebled so they can get the intended gift with a little more agency over specifics with less risk of them spending it unwisely.
I think it’s mostly social convention - i.e. sometimes it’s not the ‘done thing’ to give someone money as it shows a lack of thoughtfulness perhaps. Gift cards are stopgap that make it look like you’ve put some effort into a gift.
They allow the recipient choice. However, they have a lot of downsides too. I bet gift cards from my in laws all the time. They generally go unused as are often for places I don’t visit, so it’s more like an obligation to go spend time and buy a present from a shop I don’t really like. However, it’s the thought that counts, so I don’t begrudge it, nor do I waste my time.
Couldn’t you ask them to give you gift cards for places you might visit?
People are crazy, yes. It is obvious even without a shower :)
But for sane people, it is good, especially in the case of the videogames. While crazies throw money to the publisher/developer, helping fund the production, I can buy a game (full game, mind you: with cleaned out bugs and a pile of DLCs) for a few bucks later. A few years later, but that’s ok for me.
Imagine if all people were like me? We might have had many fewer games.
Game pre-orders have not been good for sane people. Sure if people didn’t pre-order less games might exist overall but more good games would exist. Pre-orders have taught game companies that they can just make a game that looks pretty and has a fancy trailer and people will buy it. So now they all do that instead of making good games.
Yes that’s a good point, we need the early adopters to buy the games when they come out so companies can make their money. But still… in terms of pre-orders why not just wait until it’s been released and see what reviews are like first? 🤔
You ask crazy people to be reasonable crazy? :)
