alt Hacker NewsBut that basically screws over loyal Apple customers who trade in an entire family’s worth of iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, Macbooks, etc over the years. Sometimes you just take a giftcard because you don’t want to buy a new thing. Fast forward a couple of years, you basically learn that you traded in your Macbook Pro for nothing. How’s that not a controversy? Perhaps they should give customers non-transferable store credits that cannot be purchased elsewhere. Avoids the entire issue with gift cards.
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Ashley Home Furniture is an expert at this.
Throw in gift cards all over the place to incentivize purchases.
Go to use a gift card, "Sorry, gift cards can only be used to pay for full price items, not discounted or sale items".
Conveniently, effectively everything in the store is discounted or on sale.
That would be bad enough as-is. But you move houses, or are moving out for the first time, and someone buys you a gift card, with CASH?
They're the same gift cards. And the same "rules" which are nowhere to be found, just you arguing until you're blue in the face with a store manager who "understands, but policy".
"I could have bought this item with the cash it took to buy the gift card, but because that cash 'changed form', it's now unacceptable for payment?"
Perhaps they should just give them cash. But that wouldn't guarantee future sales and they wouldn't make a few extra percent margin off of people who never redeem their cards.
We're a multi-trillion dollar company and your BATNA is terrible. Don't like how we roll? Go fuck yourself.
Gift cards sold or issued at an Apple store are the safest kind.
There is no opportunity for the kinds of large-scale fraud you see with cards purchased elsewhere. The only risks would be the same for any other bearer instrument, e.g. wallet theft.