Gift vouchers can be nice presents, but if you think about it, you’re paying for the opportunity to lock in your money forcing the recipient to shop at that particular company. And more often than not, the recipient will then spent a little more than the value of the voucher in order to use it all. If you’d given them money instead, the outcome would have been the same, but this way the company gets your cash in advance. I have to hand it to whoever came up with the idea, it’s a capitalist’s wet dream!

And pre-orders (I’m specifically thinking of videogames here), this did make sense once upon a time when you were buying a physical copy that may have had limited stocks. But nowadays for digital pre-orders… what’s the point? You’re putting your trust in the company that the game will be polished from the start. At least with something like a Kickstarter, you’re helping to fund development of the game. But here what exactly do you get out of it? Maybe some additional pre-order cosmetics that’ll you use once? The concept is bizarre to me.

  • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 day ago

    If they care enough about how I think they’d give cash. Or no gifts at all, because the concept of “I have to give a gift for …” Just makes me accumulate more things that I won’t use, coz most things I use I buy.

    I do appreciate greatly when someone asks what I want and I can give them a list of things that need at the moment, or something I’d like to have bit feels like too much money to spend for the low amount of use I’d get. Buying random things when I can’t think of things has never worked in my favor.