Our family recently tried to redeem two $25 prepaid visa gift cards received (theperfectgift.ca), and it's been an interesting experience, which I thought I would relay in case anyone can benefit from it.

While it isn't a lot of money, I have plumbed the depths of this rabbit hole to see how far it goes. Our findings:

(A) These gift cards start at a set balance (eg. $25). Anything not spent, or any balance left, is "free money" for the issuing company. They are incentivized to prevent complete redemption of the card; zero redemption is the ideal situation from their perspective.

(B) Like regular visa cards, they have an expiration date. The expiration date is not visible on the packaging, and not indicated up-front. One of our cards was already expired. This was our first sign that these differed drastically from regular gift cards, that the gift is rendered useless after a period of time. Expirations like this are against the law with regular gift cards, but because these visa gift card exist in a grey area between gift cards and financial products, they get away with it.

(C) The cards are activated upon purchase (okay), but 12 months after activate they start charging a $3.00 per month fee, rendering the card useless fairly quickly with a face value of $25. Again, against the law with regular gift cards, but this is a sketchy grey area.

(D) To use the gift card online, you have to register the card at their sketchy website. Their website "fails" to register cards (in our cases) so it was necessary to call them and navigate a lengthy phone maze in order to register the card. After registration, it was still not possible to use it on Amazon.ca

My guess is they aim for high attrition with online registration to prevent complete use, since its easier to convert the balance to something less transient than their service online. With in-store purchases, it's more difficult to use up the complete sum.

Learnings from this experience:

- Avoid purchasing this kind of product, stick to conventional gift cards instead (amazon, tim's, etc) since they have much more consumer friendly regulation.

- If you receive a product like this, redeem it immediately in-store for a less transient gift card.