Erin McCarthy | The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS)
Ashley Battista Ridolfi had been saving her spa gift card for the final weeks of her pregnancy.
Her husband gave it for her birthday in February, knowing she’d enjoy a premium massage — valued around $150 — at Toppers Spa, a place she’d patronized several times in the past five years.
Ridolfi, 37, of Eagleville, Pennsylvania, thought of the unused gift card immediately when she saw an article last week about the regional chain filing for bankruptcy and closing all its locations.
“I had not had the opportunity to use it yet, and I was planning on using it in the next six weeks or so,” she said Thursday.
Ridolfi, a sales and marketing director, said she hasn’t been able to find contact information for the company online. She took to a Facebook group of Toppers customers, a forum where other users wrote that they had hundreds to thousands of dollars in unused gift cards or account credits, and asked if anyone had heard what to do with unused gift cards.
“Nobody had any recommendations for me,” she said.
Turns out, even consumer advocates don’t have 100%-success-guaranteed solutions for consumers left with unredeemed gift cards to places like Toppers Spa, Bed Bath & Beyond, and other businesses that shutter suddenly.
“If you receive a gift card, you should try to use it right away,” said Chuck Bell, financial policy advocate at Consumer Reports. “Once you have it and they’ve gone out of business, you don’t have a lot of options. Now what’s going to happen often in the bankruptcy process, they’ll allow you to file a claim, but you’ll get behind a long line of other creditors,” including landlords and employees with unpaid wages
Often in those cases, he said, consumers don’t get any of their money back.
“There is nothing under federal law that protects consumers if they have gift cards to a business that goes out of business,” said Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. “That being said, there are things people can do.”
See if you can find any contact information online for the business, its corporate office, or a parent company if it has one, and reach out to them directly about your situation.
The Inquirer could not find contact information for Toppers officials, and an attorney representing the company did not return a request for comment.
Consumer experts also recommend calling around to nearby competitors. Ask if they’d honor your gift card.
“Sometimes competitors will honor gift cards just to be nice,” Murray said. “And they figure they’ll develop some new loyalty.”
Experts recommend submitting a complaint with the consumer protection division of your state’s attorney general’s office.
In Pennsylvania, residents can do this online . They can also email scams@attorneygeneral.gov or call 1-800-441-2555.
“Depending on the nature of how the business is winding down, we may be able to mediate, and if not, we can provide some helpful information and retain their records for our files for any future use,” said Brett Hambright, spokesperson for Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry.
Sometimes, he said, the office can direct you to other vendors who have agreed to honor the gift cards, or get the original business to refund your money. Other times, he added, they can work with your credit card company to issue a chargeback.
New Jerseyans can reach their state’s Division of Consumer Affairs by filing a complaint online , calling 973-504-6200, or emailing askconsumeraffairs@dca.lps.state.nj.us.
Every year, the division receives “numerous” complaints about gift cards, said Lisa Coryell, a spokesperson for Attorney General Matthew Platkin.
But “once a store enters bankruptcy, the division is unable to get consumers refunds for unused gift cards,” she said. “Consumers who do not use their gift cards before a store’s closure or their established deadline may be able to file a claim with the bankruptcy estate for the value of the card, but it is difficult to know whether or how much they might recover from such a claim.”
If you are close with the person who bought the gift card, or you bought it yourself, the purchaser may be able to get their money back, Murray said.
“If you bought with a credit card within 60 days of the statement that transaction appeared on, you can get your money refunded,” she said. “That is always guaranteed by law if you bought it in that time frame.”
To avoid being left with unused gift cards, experts recommend using your gift cards as soon as possible.
“It’s nice to save gift cards for a special occasion or something you really want to buy. Don’t hold onto it too long,” Murray said. “Figure out a good time to go out to eat. … Think of something you wanted to buy.”
If you know you haven’t used a gift card yet, keep your eyes and ears open for signs that a business may be struggling. If there are fewer cars than usual in the parking lot of a restaurant or a store is reducing its hours, you may want to use a gift card there quickly, Murray said.
Companies often, though not always, announce they’re closing stores a month or so in advance, Bell said, and provide at least a brief window in which customers can still use gift cards. Bed Bath & Beyond, for example, gave people a couple weeks to use gift cards.
When buying gift cards for others, keep these tips in mind, too.
Large national chains are sometimes safer than niche local businesses, Bell said, though “we’ve seen some pretty big failures of companies in recent years.”
If you want to eliminate all gift-card-giving anxiety, Bell said with a laugh, remember this saying: “Nothing says ‘I love you’ like cold, hard cash.”
“Cash doesn’t expire,” he said. “It’s good anywhere.”
“The problem culturally is people feel like cash shows a lack of imagination,” he added. “I think it shows a certain amount of thoughtfulness. You’re giving something that gives the user a tremendous amount of flexibility.”
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