{"id":636,"date":"2010-03-31T21:25:58","date_gmt":"2010-03-31T21:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/?p=636"},"modified":"2010-04-06T21:36:03","modified_gmt":"2010-04-06T21:36:03","slug":"the-limitations-of-open-loop-gift-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/?p=636","title":{"rendered":"The Limitations of Open Loop Gift Cards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you try to use your open-loop (Amex, Visa, Mastercard) gift card for certain purchases, you will find out<a href=\"http:\/\/consumerist.com\/2010\/03\/my-friend-gave-me-a-completely-useless-amex-gift-card.html\"> just how futile<\/a> it can be. The problem is that certain retailers will routinely try to authorize a certain amount just to pre-validate the card. For instance, if you want to use your card at the pump to buy gas, the pump will authorize $50 or $75 just to allow you to use the card, so if you have a card that is only worth $25, there is no way it will get accepted. People don&#8217;t notice this with credit or debit cards because they typically have a much higher credit limit or balance so it is never a problem. Restaurants also typically do this when running your card to leave extra room for a tip, even if you tell them to put a certain amount on the card.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you try to use your open-loop (Amex, Visa, Mastercard) gift card for certain purchases, you will find out just how futile it can be. The problem is that certain retailers will routinely try to authorize a certain amount just to pre-validate the card. For instance, if you want to use your card at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=636"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":673,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions\/673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}