As part of his Christmas bonus MO got 2 $250 Visa Giftcards from his employer. We hadn't used them yet, I prefer to save things like that and use them for something special instead of just frittering them away. But I knew they assessed inactivity fees if the cards aren't used within 12 months, so we were going to make sure that we at least used them once by December of this year.
Yesterday MO was going to town to run some errands and our CC bill for the month is already pretty high due to car repairs, so I suggested he take one of the Visa Giftcards for the errands and that way they will be activated. He called the 800 number on the cards to confirm the balances and found out we had already been charged $14.50 per card in inactivity fees! Apparently the employer had purchased them many months before they were given to us! Which of course we hadn't thought about. So we lost $29 due to that. MO did use some on each of the cards yesterday so we won't get any more fees for another 12 months at least.
We plan on taking at least one of the GCs with to Vegas to pay for eating out as that should be pretty much our only expense other then gambling.
So lesson learned! Don't assume GCs that you receive were just recently purchased!
Gift Card Inactivity Fees - Grrrr
July 14th, 2017 at 04:38 pm
July 14th, 2017 at 04:59 pm 1500047956
July 14th, 2017 at 06:16 pm 1500052608
http://consumersunion.org/research/state-gift-card-consumer-protection-laws-2013-update/
Certainly worth requesting fee for two cards be waived for goodwill since it was gifted by employer, and DH had no way of knowing expiry
July 14th, 2017 at 07:28 pm 1500056892
July 14th, 2017 at 07:52 pm 1500058337
July 15th, 2017 at 01:51 am 1500079869