Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Y U Hate My Gift Card?

This is an opinion post! O-P-I-N-I-O-N. That means it's MY opinion. It might be yours, or it might not be. Either way, it's just an opinion post, so that's the warning. :-p


For my birthday and my rezday last year, I got a couple of Earthstones gift cards. I like Earthstones a lot, but I don't often have it in the budget to buy new things because over the past couple of years, it seems like they have just gone up and up in price. Of course that's well within their right to do, and the stuff is pretty, but just not always in my budget.

So I was really excited when I got the group notice about a sale at Earthstones. Yay for SALES! I have my 2 cards which equal up to about $1600L. Double yay! I skipped on over to Earthstones, card in hand, and discovered....

I can't use the card on sale items.

Y U NO WANT MY CARD?


Now, had I read the notecard that was sent beyond "Sale!" then I would have realized this before I went out there. But still, why CAN'T I use my gift card? Is a gift card not like money? Someone paid for it so that I could have jewelry. Earthstones has the money. I don't have the jewelry. Something is wrong with this equation.

I guess they could say that the reason is because it would be like getting almost double the items with the card that I personally didn't pay for. But if I was paying for $1600L worth of sale items, no money has been lost. The $1600L was paid at one time. [Actually $3000L, the value of the 2 cards, but of course I've used some since then.]

Is it just too hard to set the gift card script to reflect the new sale price? Or is there another reason? I just don't see why I shouldn't be able to use my gift cards on the sale items. It makes absolutely no sense to me, and truly, seems just slightly selfish of the creator. But hey, if there's a really good reason, let me know! It's not like I'll ever stop shopping at Earthstones, but I have to admit, this leaves me a little uninspired to spend money there again.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have to agree here it... it really makes no sense at all.

Anonymous said...

I have to agree with you 100% I look at second life as well, a second life with a few extra added items that we can't do in the real world but it's still like a second life. With that be said, when you get a gift card for a birthday or Christmas in RL you can use that on sale items in the store. So why wouldn't you be able to do that in something that is suppose to be a 'second life'

Lila Clemenceau said...

This is extremely senseless.
One time I bought a 500L gift card from a store and couldn't use either all because the creator didn't want us to use the gift card to get a bit of more stuff.
It's so selfish, since you paid full price for this card, and it's just like money in a card, what's the problem with that if you already paid for it?

Talena Carissa said...

I have to assume that this is something to do with scripting. I can't think of any other logical reason why gift cards can't be used on sales. They already have the money for the card so anything else seems more than a bit senseless.

Kit Jordan said...

Hear, hear! Also, Earthstones really HAS gotten prohibitively expensive. I haven't bought anything from them in months because I consider it an insult to my intelligence to charge the equivalent of $5.00 USD for a pixel bracelet, or whatever. Yes, they are high quality, they make gorgeous stuff, but I refuse to pay those kinds of prices out of principle.

Jared said...

That sucks when stores do that! Especially a jewely store cuz they have sales all the time! I bet they have a steal one get one free sale (jk don't steal from a jewelry store they have money to hunt you down). Anyway your post is really cool. I'm a stand-up comedian so my posts are funny observations and weird but true stories. you should check it out some time
http://whatwouldjareddo.blogspot.com

check it out!

Emerald Wynn said...

I used to buy new releases at Earthstones almost religiously but WOOOOOOOOOOO yeah, I don't know what happened, but suddenly the stuff was too pricey for my SL jewelry budget. It's beautiful stuff though, but I rarely shop there anymore . . . unless someone gives me a gift card!

That sucks and makes no sense. I hope it was an oversight and not a purposeful decision. :(

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

I agree. Money paid is money paid; if they discriminate on the basis of its being paid in the past, on a card, that makes no more sense nor is it any fairer than if they refused to sell to someone whose ARC was too high, or whose AO was unappealing