Good news, gift card hoarders, Woolies is doing you a solid by removing the expiry date on its cards altogether, meaning you can spend them whenever the hell you want.
From March 31, the company’s gift cards will be sold without an expiry date, but it will also be lifting the date on cards bought from the end of March 2017. No longer will you need to feel the dread of finding an expired BWS gift card and ponder all of the piss you could have bought with it.
“After talking to more of our customers about this in recent months, we’ve decided to go one better and scrap gift card expiry dates for good,” head of Woolworths financial services and insurance, Chris Cramond, said.
“It means one less thing to worry about for our busy customers, who will have complete flexibility to use gift cards as and when it suits them.”
Cramond previously said the expiry dates would be extended to three years, but clearly opted to scrap them altogether. The new change applies to cards for Woolworths supermarkets, Big W, Dan Murphy’s, BWS, Cellarmasters and Caltex Woolworths Petrol.
To be fair, the NSW Department of Fair Trading would have made Woolies implement the three-year minimum expiry by March 31 anyway, but it’s nice to see the company go a step further.
According to a study by finder.com.au, Aussies waste a staggering $70 million every year on unredeemed gift cards, which I think we can all agree is a shitload of money going towards absolutely nothing. Australians left an average of 54 bucks on gift cards, which adds up to a collective $142 million over two years.
I, for one, can’t wait to collect an entire draw full of gift cards that I can use whenever the fuck I want, but will probably just forget about.
