A gift card is a nice concept and is widely accepted as the most useful gift. It basically is nothing but a coupon card or a visa card with a preloaded amount. A nice explanation of what it is , is described here. It makes the perfect gift in both cases, when you don't know what gift to buy for others and also when you know what makes the perfect sense. To elaborate, when you aren't sure or don't have time, buying a prepaid visa card for a certain amount works very well. And in the other case, say a kids birthday party, you would like to buy a toy for the kid but aren't sure what the kid likes. And in this case a toy store's gift card would work the best so that the kid can choose the one he likes, the next time he is taken to that store. In the US, pretty much all the major stores give an option of buying gift cards which can be gifted to others. Most of the time you pay a little above the actual cash value of the card. Also, there is an option where you can buy a prepaid visa card that can be used at any store. So, it depends on what you wish to present. If you do not want to tie the recievers to a specific store (shop), a visa card would be the best one and if you want them to buy something specific but don't want to force a product, a store specific one works out. The above options cover the most popular services available. However there are a few interesting websites which allow you to manage giftcards while others offer an option to use the same gift card across multiple stores kinda like the prepaid Visa card (without a store name). And here are these. And if you already received a few gift cards but are trying hard to somehow encash them, try the following websites where you can either swap/exchange/trade or sell them. Plasticjungle:
Plasticjungle is a marketplace for the gift cards. Here you can sell the giftcards you received or purchase them at a lower price.
Each of the websites listed above perform mostly the same function and the website name itself explains the rest. So, click through and choose the best one that fits your purpose. |