Macy's - real Customer Service!

You may have read or heard the warnings about Gift Cards, as the holiday season approaches. If you purchase a gift card and the company goes out of business before the Gift Card is used, your money is gone.

And you've probably also heard about inactivity fees - those nasty, hidden charges that begin eating up your card's value after, say, six months.

And the worst? The expiration date of a gift card, after which a retailer just pockets your money. You snooze; you lose.

Illinois law changed a while back; I think cards no longer expire, but you might still have to watch for inactivity fees.

And then there is Macy's. Five-six years ago I gave my daughter a gift card for Hecht's, which I thought she had told me was one of her favorite stores in the area where she lives. It turns out that she never redeemed the gift card. When she showed it to me and explained there was no Hecht's store in her area and that Hecht's had been bought out by Macy's, we thought her money was gone. The gift card receipt was so faded that I couldn't read it, but she could. And one faded line informed her that the card had expired two years ago.

Upon calling the tollfree number on the back of the card, I found it was still a working number. And the gift card number was still active. AND the gift card still has its original value. The recorded message further informed me that there are no inactivity fees and now no expiration date.

Now THAT's Customer Service!