Think of each gift card you find on your desk, in your wallet or in your kitchen “junk” drawer as a ghost of a particular Christmas past. This one’s from my co-worker who rushed into the holiday party late carrying a plastic Walgreens bag! Oh, this one’s from Uncle Fred, who joked that I shouldn’t spend it all in the same place!
Such ghosts hover in the recesses of more homes and pockets than you might imagine.
According to a 2023 Christmas report, almost half the U.S. had at least one unspent voucher or gift card
According to a 2023 Christmas report from The Associated Press, almost half the U.S. (47% of us to be exact) had at least one unspent voucher or gift card, and the unspent money on those cards was believed to total $23 billion. That’s enough to buy each of the 334.9 million people in the U.S. a Secret Santa gift that costs $68.67.
Looking at the $75 in unspent gift cards I came across last week, including three cards that hadn’t been swiped at all, I figured that I’d likely be a few pounds heavier if I’d used the ones for Popeye’s and Dunkin’ Donuts, and maybe a pound or so lighter if there weren’t a remainder on the card for Academy Sports. Similarly, in the same way that gyms love people who buy memberships but don’t put a single second’s worth of wear and tear on the treadmills, retailers have got to love the friend who buys you a gift card you don’t use.
Take Starbucks. In 2019, according to a CNBC report, the coffee shop chain had $140 million in so-called breakage revenue, that is, the money on gift cards that went unspent. Last year, according to a 2024 report from MarketWatch, Starbucks had “breakage revenue of $196.1 million for company-operated stores, along with another $18.9 million in licensed-store revenue.” MarketWatch, quoting the chain’s third-quarter fiscal report, noted that Starbucks customers had $1.77 billion unspent on gift cards, a significant portion of which will never be spent.
In some states, some portion of unused gift card money goes to that state government’s unclaimed property pile. But the fact remains that the gift card you intend as a freebie for your friend may become a freebie for whatever company’s name graces the card.
And that’s before we even get to the Grinches whose thievery results in gift cards hanging on in-store displays that are as empty as Whoville’s looted shelves. There are ways to tamper with cards on display in the shopping aisles that allows them to be drained between the time the card is activated and the person with the card attempts to use it. Kathy Stokes, the director of fraud prevention programs at AARP, told HuffPost that when she buys a gift card from a store, she picks one that’s behind most of the others. A visible card is more at risk of being tampered with.
Unlike banks that must help you get your money back if someone wrongly uses your debit or credit card, Stokes said, gift cards “don’t have those protections.” And if you ask the place that sold the card to make you whole, you might just get a “Bah! Humbug!”
The gift card you intend as a freebie for your friend may become a freebie for whatever company’s name graces the card.
Despite the risks of and the likelihood that many will go unused, gift cards remain incredibly popular. The National Retail Federation said last month that 54% of consumers expect to give clothing or accessories this holiday season, and 44% expect to give gift cards. U.S. shoppers are expected to spend $28.6 billion on gift cards this season, slightly down from the $29.3 billion spent last season.
Five years ago, Miss Manners described gift cards as “minimally more thoughtful than outright cash.” But if it’s for a specific store, restaurant or coffee shop, she wrote, “all you have done is to limit where the amount can be spent — and sometimes when, because those cards may have expiration dates.” This year, she advised a correspondent not to express their gratitude with a restaurant gift certificate that wouldn’t cover the cost of a meal. As she put it, a gift that “forces its recipient to spend extra on something that may not otherwise have been wanted” is ill-advised. It's basically a coupon.
At the risk of sounding like Charlie Brown sighing and complaining to Linus, I fear the gift card has taken some of the joy out of Christmas. Yes, asking your loved ones for gift cards can help you avoid getting a present that you may have to pretend to like, but they also eliminate the potential of being surprised and the potential of the gift being memorable.
I can close my eyes and remember gifts my family gave me when I was a child — a cowboy hat from my Uncle Will who lives in Texas; a brown teddy bear from Muh, my maternal grandmother; a red 10-speed from my mom and dad that I posed with on Christmas morning in my pale, yellow pajamas; the gray zippered sweatshirt my mom gave me the last Christmas before she died.
Those memories are ghosts of Christmases past, too. They remind me of the gifts I received — and not of the ones I failed to redeem.
