You don’t see me bragging very often about being a United States citizen, mostly because I’m not a big fan of many of the things that the United States is doing these days. But, man, I can’t stop bragging about being a Californian, because California is flat out awesome. (Yes, there are a number of things that California has problems with, but we’re much more awesome than the feds at this time.)

One of the ways that California has been awesome is that in California, it is illegal for merchants to set expiration dates on gift certificates/gift cards, or to charge fees on them. Now, granted, some merchants have found loopholes to get around that limitation slightly, but they still mean that when you give someone a gift card, it’s much more difficult for that merchant to count it as extra money for their pockets.

Well, for whatever unusual reason, I was watching our local news on TV tonight (something that I almost never do), and they had a special report on a new law that went to effect in California on January 1, 2008 dealing with the issue of low-balance gift cards.

Have you ever had a case where you didn’t fully utilize a gift card, and didn’t feel the urge to keep spending with it because of how little was left? Consumer Reports recently found that merchants last year made $8 billion from unused gift card value. Well, the new law states that any gift certificate/gift card with a cash value of less than $10 can be redeemed for cash equivalent to its cash value, and that merchants are required to give you cash back if you ask for it. Again, this is only a California law, but this is absolutely sweet.

However, there isn’t a lot of teeth on this law, and most merchants won’t offer it to you. The news station apparently went under cover to try to get cash back at a number of stores, and a number of these stores refused to give cash back. So if you’re a Californian, you have a right to get your cash back, but you should probably be sure to inform them that it is California state law. My news station made a special gift card with the law on it that you can keep with you.

What if that still doesn’t convince them? Well, I did some Google searching for some answers. Apparently, the recommendation is to try to call or e-mail the merchant’s corporate offices to inform them of the law and what happened. But, if that still doesn’t work, you can apparently contact the state Attorney General at the following address:

Attorney General’s Office
California Department of Justice
Attn: Public Inquiry Unit
P.O. Box 944255
Sacramento, CA 94244-2550

Or you can call (916) 322-3360, or the toll-free number (in California): (800) 952-5225.

Know your rights, and take advantage of them, so that you don’t let merchants take advantage of you! (And yes, be glad that you’re a Californian and have this right!)

Tags: Attorney General, California, cash back, gift cards, gift certificates, law, merchants, rights, stores

You want to know what a modern global empire is? Think Starbucks. According to Wikipedia, they have 13,168 stores worldwide and are opening 7 new stores on a daily basis. I think that’s absolutely ridiculous.

About two years ago, I made a just-for-fun post in the private phpBB Teams forum in which I asked team members to lookup and find out how many Starbucks stores were in their area. Here in the SF Bay Area, there’s at least one Starbucks in every city. In fact, there are five different Starbucks stores within only a 2 mile radius of my home. One of them is a block and a half up the street. Across the street from AT&T Park in San Francisco, there literally are two Starbucks stores within three buildings of each other, on the same block. (Albeit one of them is a store inside a Safeway store, but the Safeway store does have a Starbucks sign on the window which is three buildings away from the standalone Starbucks store.) When a class from my school visited Chinatown two weeks ago, there were two full-blown Starbucks stores literally a block apart from each other across the street from the Chinatown entrance. And both were full to capacity. That just flabbergasted me.

So the challenge is for you to find out how many Starbucks stores are in your area? To determine this, enter your address into the Starbucks Store Locator, and to make sure we’re all on the same page, choose a search radius of 20 miles. The total number of stores will be shown on the bottom of the list. Post your result in the Comments section of this post.

I bet that you probably can’t beat my number unless you live in New York City or something. There are currently 217 Starbucks Stores within 20 miles of my house. Yeah. THAT’S a lot of caffeine.

Can you beat my 217? (Other friends of mine who live in San Mateo don’t count!) Hie thee hence to the Store Locator, and then share your results in the Comments section!

Tags: challenge, craziness, empire, locator, Starbucks, stores