ALL Stores Must Follow New York State Mandate Immediately

This is great if you have gift cards from stores in New York State! There are some new laws that stores need to follow and it finally feels like they are watching out for us because they now can no longer expire or deduct funds for not using the gift card!

On average in the United States, consumers will spend about 30 billion dollars on gift cards during the holiday season every single year.

gift cards or gift certificates purchased on or after December 10, 2022, remain valid for nine years from the date of purchase. And when the remaining value of the gift card or gift certificate is less than five dollars, the recipient can opt to receive cash for the balance.

The New York rule now mandates that no gift card is allowed to charge you any of those activation fees (or any other way that a store wants to phrase that):

• activation fees
• retroactive fees
• redemption fees
• service fees
• dormancy fees
• latency fees
• administrative fees
• handling fees
• access fees
• periodic fees
• renewal fees
• re-loading fees

There is ONE exception to the New York State law that the State will let happen.

If you buy a gift card for a place that has multiple merchants that it can be used for (for example, Marshalls and TJ Maxx are owned by the same company), they can charge you a fee for activation. Per New York State law, that fee can never be more than 9 dollars--which, actually seems like stealing from the person who is getting the gift card.

Now, it is very important to know that the law of the gift cards is all about WHEN the gift card was purchased. For example, if you have a gift card that was bought years before the new law and they are still deducting funds every year for inactivity that is not protected because it was bought BEFORE the law began. It is important to check out this chart that New York State has made.