Gift Cards Can Be Hazardous to Your Wealth!

I started out with good intentions in mind when I bought a hundred dollar value American Express Gift Card to use while traveling to Florida, Christmas last. I didn't want to get down the highway and find out my gift card didn't work for some reason, so I thought I'd just purchase something small, just to make sure it would work OK when I needed it down the road.

It was the safety factor that persuaded me to buy a gift card in the first place. I didn't want to end-up loosing or having stolen from me what little bit of cash I had. Times were already tough as it was. This would have been back when gas prices were through the roof-around $4.00 a gallon-They don't call it liquid gold, for nothin'! Little did I know the anguish it would cause me, having found out I couldn't use my own money, anywhere, for what ended up being a full 7 days!

The trip started out fine as I stopped at a local convenience store and filled the fuel tank, using the pay-at-the-pump option, in my Burgundy colored Toyota Camry. It only took $4.87 to top it off and off I went, Florida bound, nothing but happy thoughts of good-times to be had, with long-unseen family and friends on my mind.

My problems began, like a snow-slide before an avalanche, when I stopped to refill the gas tank, near the Georgia/Florida border-exit 5. I slid my card and again selected the pay-at-the-pump selection. "Card denied, please see attendant" flashed on the black-on-green screen. So, I went inside with a sinking premonition "Here we go, I wonder what can go wrong now!" The attendant was an absolute doll though, handling my situation as if it were her very own. She tried sliding the card several times, using different configurations each time-I assume, but to no avail. She then called the 1-800 number on the back of the gift card, and waited patiently until a real-live air-breathing individual came on the line.

Come to find out, the card was indeed 'locked-out' and the reason escaped all logic, for me at least, at the time. The gift card was locked-out because of this: Apparently, when you use the pay-at-the-pump function at any gas pump, using a gift card of any denomination, no matter how little the charge, a temporary hold of $95.00 (or the largest amount available up to $95.00-less if $25.00 or $50.00 gift cards are used, for example) is charged against your card, seemingly to insure you don't run-up the card over the amount of the purchase price of the gift card. The funds on the gift card will then be placed on-hold until the credit card company receives verification from the convenience store, or where ever you buy gas, in the form of physical hard-copies of the actual tallies from each fuel pump for that particular day.

In other words, when the store closes at night, or whenever the pumps are tallied-usually late at night-the batched receipts are mailed to the gift/credit card company, who in-turn, audit said receipt tallies and-assuming there are no errors-release the funds back to the store for that particular day, and release all gift card holds as well. I later found out that if I had gone inside the convenience store to pay for my gas, the hold would not have been placed on the card, and everything would have been hunky-dory. I haven't verified this for a fact, but I think this procedure is done for all debit and credit cards pay-at-the-pump purchases also.

Needles to say, the future of gift cards purchasing within my circle of friends and family, have come to a screeching halt. Or at least placed on temporary probation, until the sting stops hurting, and the swelling goes down. The proverb 'once bitten, twice shy' definitely applies here, and I made a vow to tell every-thing-that-moves about my experience, to try and help some other poor, traveling soul from getting the smack-down from the seemingly innocuous gift card industry. And thus, my good-deed accomplished, I can now rest easier...until, that is, I'm bowled-over, once again, by some unforeseen anomaly within the random universe; when, once again, the Pen-Slinger rides again! Until then 'Happy trails to you, until we meet again'.