When is a gift certificate not a gift certificate?

Buy one, wait a few years to try to redeem it and you might find out.

Gift certificate expiration is the topic of HB324, which was discussed but not voted on by the House Business and Labor Committee on Thursday. The bill would prohibit a gift certificate — meaning a certificate, electronic card or other medium — worth $25 or more from expiring within five years after it is issued.

The bill's sponsor, Rep. Larry Wiley, D-West Valley, said many people receive gift certificates tucked away in wedding cards but only discover them later.

"Five years just seems like a reasonable amount of time that a person would need to use a certificate," he told the committee. "I myself have had occasions where I've received gift certificates and put them on my top drawer, and my wife has put things on top of it and I just forget about it. And when you do some spring cleaning-type things, you come across it."

Some legislators questioned both the $25 threshold and five-year period. Rep. Curtis Oda, R-Clearfield, said five years "makes it very difficult for a business that issues a certificate to track, and it becomes an accounting nightmare."

Rep. Craig Frank, R-Pleasant Grove, wondered if the $25 amount would result in merchants instead issuing gift certificates in smaller denominations to avoid the bill's effects. Frank admitted being victimized by such an expiration when he tried to use an old certificate at a restaurant.

"I thought I was going to get a meal on the card and then — boom! — it comes time to pay the bill and I don't have access to that money because the card's expired," he said. "In my opinion, it would seem as though if certain consideration has been given . . . the contract should stay in force regardless of what the period of time is, as long as the business is still providing services or product for the lifetime.

"I understand it's a clerical issue, and I understand that there's some real heartache there having to carry over that account that continues to accrue from year to year to year to year, but a lot of that's done now with the push of a button, and the clerical aspect of that is very minor."

The committee's chairman, Rep. Stephen Clark, R-Provo, had a similar line of reasoning.

"If you pay hard dollars for a certificate, that certificate is as good as money, isn't it?" Clark asked. "Money never expires. Why would that certificate expire? . . . If they have a problem with it, maybe they shouldn't issue certificates. If it's a problem accounting-wise, maybe they shouldn't get into it. To me, when I pay $5 for something, then I ought to be able to have $5 of worth as long as that's in my possession."