Card sharks

About 23.3 million Americans have unused gift cards from last year's holidays--that's at least $972 million in unredeemed cards. Indeed, 54% of respondents received gift cards for the 2005 holidays. Nearly a year later, 19% of the gift-card recipients have not used one or more of the cards received.


Other folks say it's worse than that: Gift Cards are the fastest growing method of retail payment today... $42-$45B was spent on these payment cards in 2003. An estimated $4B will not be redeemed by consumers, and pocketed as pure profit by merchants.


And you can't return the card.