Brisbane entrepreneur Tim Kelly aims to make expired retail gift cards a thing of the past with his new app, Use it Don’t Lose it.
According to consumer group Choice, the Australian gift card industry is big business, with over $2.5 billion worth of cards purchased each year. Of these, over 30 per cent expire before they can be used.
“Those figures are astounding but not surprising,” says Kelly. “Retailers are basically being paid for nothing and to the detriment of their customers…These retailers are paying a fortune to develop their customer loyalty programs and yet they provide absolutely no value or goodwill to their customers when it comes to gift cards.”
Kelly’s app, which is free to download, reminds consumers to use their gift cards before the expiry date and even includes a prompt as to where the card has been stored. He was inspired to create the app after a bad experience with a large Australian retailer who refused to honour a $100 gift card that had recently expired.
“To receive a gift that should be as good as cash and to not be able to use it isn’t a nice feeling, and I’m sure that millions of consumers throughout Australia can relate to my frustration. After that experience, I researched what sort of protections consumers have when it comes to gift cards and realised there is very little on that front.
“So I decided if retailers weren’t going to come to the party and treat gift cards like cash, I’d come up with an app that would take a proactive approach to tackling the issue and prevent consumers from getting a raw deal.”
The Use it Don’t Lose it app can be downloaded via the iTunes App Store or Google Play.
