Legal Question in Discrimination Law in Pennsylvania

Re: Expirations on Gift Certificates

You're almost correct. Restaurants and most other merchants cannot _enforce_ expirations on their gift certificates. They can right pretty much anything they want. There are arguments that it costs a vendor money to have outstanding gift certificates. But neither should a vendor be unjustly enriched because someone hasn't gotten around to shopping for at thei store with a gift certificate.

Smart vendors get around this by stating in the gift certificate contract that after XX date outstanding, the gift certificate entails a carrying/service charge of X percent of it's value (must be a reasonable amount). After so long the certificate would have no value left.

A truly good vendor would redeem a gift certificate no matter when it was presented. Just having an expiration date probably isn't a strict violation (I'm not certain), but enforcing it would be a violation of various statutes.

You could report a violation to the dept of consumer protection for your jurisdiction.

If I can be of assistance to you on any other legal matter I would be happy to discuss it with you. You can contact me at [email protected].

Regards,

Roger Traversa

Arjont.com