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Recently I re-discovered £10-worth of Tesco's loyalty vouchers which I had temporarily forgotten about, and had gone out-of-date by five days. The air was blue in response to my completely disproportionate visceral reaction to this discovery. Tesco's, in my estimation, and due to no fault which could
be fairly attributed to them, dropped in esteem by several notches; the well-known units of esteem.
We all know that this is why traders issue vouchers. Their non-redemption by absent-minded dopes such as me gives them a tidy profit. However the cliff-edge of non-redemption is so final that it can seem rather harsh and perhaps.. see above.. dent the loyalty of semi-habitual customers which are supposedly prized so much.
Normal cash is, of course, a mere voucher. The national banks engineer the gradual expiry of cash by means of inflation and little tricks such as periodically changing the coins and notes rendering the ones down the back of the sofa 'Non legal tender'. This, however, is a gradual decline, rather than the ripped-off sticking plaster of fixed expiry date which led to the sharp pang of regret in my basal ganglia. But in this case nobody cares very much.
My idea therefore is for grocery stores or other businesses to issue 'gradually declining vouchers' which lose their value over time, after their nominal extinction date, say 10% per month to be fair.
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//We all know that this is why traders issue vouchers. Their non-redemption by absent-minded dopes such as me gives them a tidy profit.// |
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I'm not sure it is, because the cost to them in goodwill must be significant. A shop stitches me up like that, I just don't go there again if there's any alternative. |
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Maplin failed to point out how I could have saved money on vouchers when I bought a load of stuff, a few years later they went bankrupt. |
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Maplin. Sigh, I miss being robbed blind by them. |
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I'm increasingly aware that once I've bought something online, a couple of hours later I get an email from said vendor offering me a 10%, 25% money off voucher "because they haven't seen me in a while". Bastards! |
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Have a bun [+] but appreciate it now, because it will soon degrade into a [ ] and eventually you will find it turning into a smelly bone. |
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Isn't the reason for expiry to do with accountancy? If they don't expire, the business has an ever increasing agglomeration of liability that it has to drag alongside its balance sheet carcass year after year, the cash benefit having been spaffed into the pockets of shareholders within 12 months? And so isn't this idea just itself an accounting treatment? This is the meanest thing I have ever said on the halfbakery, sorry, bhumphrys. |
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[+] Brilliant. This sounds good for the purveyor and the customer. I wouldn't be surprised if a major retailer jumped on this. The expiry is a strong reason to BUY NOW! And the retailer would be happy to sell leftover sale merch any time, higher than the first-day sale price. |
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What if it worked in reverse? Wait and save more? Like ebay bidding or showing up at 3:30am for the Walmart Black Friday event. Riot Sale. |
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But I don't think your anger and resentment runs very deep. The next time you see a voucher you will scap it up as fast as you can, no matter that you are mad at Tesco's. As we all do. Loyalty be damned, it's the discount that really brings 'em back. |
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Chapter 2 of this story: Today I found myself, despite my festering sore of resentment, again in Tescos. |
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'Do you have a voucher?' asked the vigilant checkout operator, trying to be helpful I guess, and probably unaware of this thread. 'No' I snarled through gritted teeth, 'Mine expired a few days ago, I forgot about them'. |
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'No problem!', he declared. 'You can call the Rewards Helpline, explain what has happened, and they will sort you out!" |
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[Calum] I suspect that you are correct, but bean counters adore this sort of thing as they can give it a baffling title such as 'Depreciated Liabilities' which nobody understands and it will make them sound extremely important. It will give them joy! |
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Get out to the bins at once and rummage through the smelly fishbones until you find them! |
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Here in the state of Washington in the USA we passed a state local law requiring that that all purchased gift cards can never expire. I think that law has been around for a decade or two now and it doesn't seem to have affected the desire of stores to sell gift cards. I highly recommend passing similar laws elsewhere. |
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After re-reading this. Of course if the vouchers are issued as a rebate after some amount of purchases, those do still expire here. Having them expire gradually would be better. {+} |
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Do you think the Rewards Helpline will honor the full amount of the vouchers, or will they negotiate a lower, latecomer price? If they do negotiate you have gotten the core of what you propose, or done better if they do fully honor the voucher. |
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But I suspect there will be an “offer” that requires you to shop harder than you had originally planned, and spend more, teasing you to keep shopping while ostensibly doing you a solid by “honoring” the old voucher. |
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We have no store vouchers here, and it’s a fight to get the retailers to honor manufacturer’s coupons. Also no Tescos. |
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[scad] Bravo Washington! Should be universal, like cash. |
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