Problems With Current Day Gift Cards
It’s easy to forget to pay with a gift card, let alone bring the gift card itself! Don’t make that mistake ever again with DONO.
Each year for Christmas, my in-laws give us a gift card to a local restaurant. It is always a sizeable amount and chosen thoughtfully. One year, we got a gift card to a place that was trending so the line to get in was ridiculous and reservations were not taken. I went two hours before the restaurant’s opening, my husband later joined, and we had a fabulous dinner until it came down to pay—We had spent way under the gift card amount. The restaurant was a modern take on dim sum where carts of food roll around and you pay per plate. We had thought we had gotten enough between the two of us, but we were shy about forty bucks (it was a generous gift card!). We were faced with a dilemma—a leftover balance and the first-world burden of having to go again with another long wait.
Fast forward a few years later. We received a gift card from a friend to a local breakfast spot and when it came time to pay, the conversation with my husband went something like this: Wait, I thought you were bringing the gift card. No, I thought you had it on you! And kid you not, the second time we went for a do over, having brought the gift card this time, we forgot to use it! The joke was on us, but seriously, does a problem like this even have to exist?
This is just a couple of the problems with current day gift cards I’ve experienced, and then there is also the following:
- Expired cards
- Store/restaurant goes out of business
- Additional fees taken out of balance the longer it goes unused
- An inadequate amount that will require you to spend more than you wanted or spend at the company at all
- Lost cards
Now enter in DONO, the future of gift cards. You have it on your phone so there is no forgetting, and the burden of a remaining balance doesn’t even apply because you will always have the leftover amount accessible, ready to use at your next stop. Perhaps it’s ice cream (actually, let’s get fancy and make it an affogato), or grabbing a night cap—the choice is yours to flexibly use wherever and whenever without having to remember to bring the card with you.
Thank you to my in-laws and our friends for the thoughtful gifts and allowing us to enjoy a restaurant more than once. I’m not complaining, but now with DONO, the woes of remaining balances and forgetfulness are in the past.