Ontario shoppers feeling ripped off by mall gift cards

When Bahador Ayoubzadeh showed up at Ottawa's St. Laurent Shopping Centre with a shiny plastic gift card recently, he thought he had $100 to play with.

Ayoubzadeh had been given the mall-wide gift card a year or two earlier, but had forgotten all about it.

But when he rediscovered it, a cashier informed him the card's value had dwindled to a mere 10 bucks.

"This is a total ripoff. It's like gambling. You forget your card and suddenly everything is gone.," Ayoubzadeh told CBC's Ontario Today on Thursday.

"When they said it was 10 dollars, I was so pissed off. It's unbelievable. Like, are you joking?"

No joke, MPP says

For Toronto MPP Arthur Potts, it's no joke.

Earlier this week, the Ontario legislature unanimously passed Bill 47, Potts' private member's bill to ban expiration dates on points consumers accrue through loyalty plans like Air Miles.

Now, Potts says, he wants to ensure the same thing doesn't happen to mall gift card owners.

"We were very clear in our legislation on loyalty reward points: the passage of time, of itself, was not sufficient to expire loyalty points. And I'm surprised [this regulation exists]," Potts told Ontario Today.

Different from store cards

Judy Conway received two $100 gift cards from her daughters for the Cataraqui Centre in Kingston, Ont. Like Ayoubzadeh, Conway forgot she had the cards — and when she tried to go shopping with them, their entire value had disappeared.

"I was livid," Conway said. "I thought it was against the law to have the gift cards expire."

As things now stand, the rules around mall gift cards are different than gift cards tied to a particular retailer, said John Lawford, executive director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre in Ottawa.

Under Ontario's Consumer Protection Act, shopping malls can apply a monthly "dormancy fee" of up to $2.50 to customers' cards, beginning 15 months after the card was purchased.

Those deductions can continue until the card becomes worthless.

"That's where people get confused between these and the retail gift cards, like The Gap or La Senza, which you buy at the drug store," Lawford said. "Those don't have an expiry date."

While mall gift cards are required to spell out the fact that they expire in the fine print, Lawford said that malls are risking customer loyalty by enforcing those dormancy fees.

"I think, across the board, retailers should be thinking about this issue. Because it does matter to consumers."