If you got a Simon Giftcard for Christmas (or like me, a number of them), you know how they work. As the Simon Gift Card website explains:
The Simon Giftcard looks and acts like a credit card. Unlike a credit card, the Simon Giftcard stores value: the dollar amount you prepay.*
As the gift recipient uses the card, the amount of the purchase is automatically deducted from the card's available balance. When the available balance is reduced to zero, the gift recipient can [keep] the card as a memento of your gift.
Let's forget for a moment the ridiculous idea of saving an empty Credit Card to remember Aunt Mildred by. The pertinent clause is right before that:
When the available balance is reduced to zero, the gift recipient can [keep] the card as a memento of your gift.
What all holders of these cards realize, right about now, is that it's a royal pain in the ass to get the balance to zero. Here's why:
You use a hundred dollar card to buy some supplies at Home Depot. The total comes to $91.06.
So now you have a credit card with a $8.94 limit. You could put it in your wallet and slowly chip it down by remembering to use it for small dollar purchases (what's a Christmas without new tube socks?). You could pump yourself exactly $8.94 in gas (Mmmm...petroleum....). You could remember your balance, add up the price of items in your cart in your head, and then do a split transaction at the cash register (and hope you got the math right, so yer card don't bounce!) Whatever. It's a hassle. So much so that both Kelly Ayotte AND Eliot Spitzer sued Simon Gift Cards over this and other problems.
And take it from one who knows: if you don't spend this money now, you will lose this card. Life is too short to be tracking $8.42 gift cards (or was it $8.93?)
So we're proposing a new initiative: Gift Cards for a Blue America. The way it works is this.
Get what gift cards you have small remaining balances on. Look up the exact balances at the Simon Gift Card website. Write them down. The screen should look something like this:
This is important: If you see the card is not registered for online purchases yet, as in the above case, register it. I've pointed to where you find that information on the Simon page. If you don't register the card your transaction will bounce, creating a headache for both you and ActBlue.
After registering your card and writing down the balance, go to either the general Act Blue NH-Senate 2008 page (shown in screenshots below) or our ActBlue BlueHampshire page (slightly more confusing) and donate the money to the general fund to defeat Sununu. This money will go to whatever candidate wins the Democratic Primary next year. If you want to be really good, save $1 of your balance to tip the good folks at ActBlue for the work they do (the service works on donations).:
Fill in your info, and at the bottom of the page add the tip that you saved out of the balance at the top:
Submit, confirm, and that's it. Your card is now gloriously empty, and you've done something good. If you did everything right, you'll receive a confirmation email:
And that's it. If you do this, you will have to purchase socks and gas on your own dime. But I think you'll feel it was worth it. |
