Fraters Libertas

Government Making Decisions So You Don't Have To

In what has to be one of the most egregious recent examples of government meddling in areas far a field from its legitimate roles and responsibilities, a couple of local statists want to impose a ban on gift-card expirations:

Two DFL legislators announced Thursday that they would renew their efforts to prohibit gift cards from expiring or charging penalties for delayed use.

Legislation seeking a ban on time limits and fees was approved in the DFL-controlled Senate last year but never got a hearing in the Republican-controlled House.

"When holiday shoppers buy a $25 gift card, they expect the card to be worth $25, not $20," said Rep. Ron Latz of St. Louis Park, who was joined by Sen. Wes Skoglund of Minneapolis.

Atta boy Ron. You're making us folks here in St Louis Park so proud to call you our representative. I had no idea that the smoldering gift-card expiration date debate had reached a crisis stage where such dramatic action was required.

Opponents of the legislation in the retail industry say that gift cards are wildly popular and that consumers apparently don't consider the limits to be a big problem.

A big problem? How about any problem at all? Are people really having difficulty redeeming these gift cards? I know I always struggle to find a way to drag myself to a store to get FREE STUFF within a FRICKIN' YEAR (if not longer) of receiving a gift card!

"These cards may be the single most popular item sold during the holiday season. ... It suggests that consumers are not as dissatisfied as these legislators," said Bruce W. (Buzz) Anderson, president of the Minnesota Retailers Association.

It suggests that these legislators don't give a damn what consumers think or how the market works.

Legislators "are approaching this from a real negative standpoint, as if retailers are trying to cheat people," Anderson said. "If people don't have a positive experience, they're not going to go back to the store."

Here's a crazy scenario for your consideration:

Company offers service.

Consumers don't like said service and patronize competitor.

Company changes service to get consumer back.

Nah...it'll never work. We need government.

Also in response to complaints, many companies in the past year have dropped the expiration dates or extended them. Among these are Half Price Books, a Dallas-based retailer that eliminated its expiration date.

Skoglund and Latz chose a Half-Price store in St. Paul's Highland Park neighborhood to announce their push for a ban in the 2006 Legislature.

Michael Miller, the company's assistant district manager for Minnesota and Iowa, said officials decided that the time limit for gift cards was in conflict with the company's basic principle of "easy to sell to and easy to buy from."

He said the accounting costs of keeping track of long-dormant gift cards were "negligible" when weighed against the value of customer satisfaction and good public relations.

When the announcement was made at the Half-Price store, on-lookers no doubt felt something hanging in the air, so permeating that they could almost see it. Here we had two nanny state do-gooders appearing to announce their intention to seek to employ the full force and power of government to FORCE companies to do something that the owners of the business they were at had already voluntarily CHOSEN to do in response to market forces. The layer of irony in the Half-Price Books atmosphere was thick and heavy that day my friends.