Reading that thread made my eyes bleed with the vitriol and vicious profanity throughout. Anyway, I think gift cards are a good concept but poorly implemented s

Reading that thread made my eyes bleed with the vitriol and vicious profanity throughout. Anyway, I think gift cards are a good concept but poorly implemented sometimes. Gift cards, I have found, are a good way for me to exchange favors to people without sending cash through the mail or having to carry/process cash on my person. For example, I was in a church group headed to an event on a school bus and they said we'd pass the hat for the driver, so I purchased a $25 Shell card, which I figured was a thoughtful way to thank him in a very material way. However, there is a ton of fraud with gift cards at all levels. People will fake them and spoof them and invalidate them while they hang on the racks. In fact the cashiers are now trained to ask anyone purchasing a gift card, whether they are being scammed, it is that prevalent for people on Craigslist and such to set up scams and then get paid in gift cards. My best friend told me about somehow his son had 2 $100 Amazon gift cards and he glitched one out and I think they outright banned his account. So this is tough even for people who have valid and legit cards to redeem. The problem is so much fraud and poor security on the cards themselves, that the vendors have little choice but to be hypervigilant and sometimes, that means false positives. Yeah, sometimes you have to send the vendor "additional info" so that they can confirm that you're the rightful holder of the card. I don't know a way around this, because real money is at stake, so I think it'll just be a constant cat-and-mouse between customers, vendors, scammers. Welcome to the new economy.