Gift Card Negativity

I constantly monitor all kinds of news and blogs for information and articles related to gift cards. These days, a healthy majority of articles are negative and are related to the riskiness of gift cards because of bankruptcies, how much gift cards sales will drop this holiday season, and how gift cards in general are a bad idea because of high fees and such. Is this the end of gift cards? I seriously doubt it. Trends of the last few years show that consumers are oblivious to the negative aspects of gift cards despite gobs of information on how bad some of them are. Surveys are projecting a 6% decrease in gift card sales this holiday season; when you compare that to spending on other things, such as a 30% drop in vehicle sales and the huge drop in sales that many consumer companies are experiencing, you could actually call gift card sales projections pretty strong, relatively speaking.