Dear LPG

I have a story to tell, which will leave you with what might be an important couple of very practical messages if you stick with it. However, I think the story is worth telling as well…

For her last birthday, my cousin did a fob-off thing.  He gave his mother a £40.00 gift voucher as a present.  She is in her early nineties and had little idea what it was.  I tried to explain, and I thought she understood she could use it instead of money in the designated shop.  I feel a little guilty because we go shopping together regularly, and I never got around to taking her to the shop where she could have spent it.  The next time it was mentioned, she told me it was taking up extra space in her purse, so she threw it away.   We decided not to tell my cousin about that!

He gave her another one this year, and its value seriously took inflation into account.   When I visited, she told me about it straight away.  I never actually looked at either of them, but she told me that it was a Tesco voucher, and I made sure that I took her to Tesco so that we could spend it.  I must admit that I wondered why he had not chosen a shop where she might have more readily bought a pair of shoes or some clothing, but ‘hey ho!’ as the saying goes…

We usually do her food shopping at Sainsbury’s, so this would be a different shopping experience than she is used to, and my Aunt suggested that we have a bit of fun. We went around the shop, buying everything that caught our eye. There was little in the basket that she needed at all. Then, we were off to the checkout.  

She has always been very particular about being served by a natural person, and I was thankful for that because when we got to the checkout, and the £52.oo worth of goods had been beeped through, she handed her voucher to the cashier, who told her that she could not spend that particular voucher in Tesco.   Imagine if we had put it all through the automatic checkout and discovered we could not pay for it.

It was a ‘One4all’ gift card bought at a Tesco branch. My aunt had looked at the receipt rather than the list of shops where you can use it. We both felt very silly as the queue members looked on, but God was good, and I could use my card to pay. 

My Aunt was so embarrassed, although we laughed about it on the way home. We decided not to tell my cousin about that escapade either!

But there is a moral or two to be learned. 

The first point is don’t mistake the place where the card was bought for the place where you can spend it. 

And I hope my story will also serve as a reminder to all LPG readers to check for those received gift vouchers that get forgotten and end up in the back of your purse. You don’t want to find them after they expire… 

FI, Catford.

In case you are interested, LPG found out how to redeem a One4all gift card online… 

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