When is a gift card not a gift card?

A few years ago shops stopped selling gift tokens - the ones that you could keep in the 'Notes' part of your wallet or purse until the time came to spend it.

Now you get little plastic cards - the same size as bank cards. Even handier - right? Except that you have to keep the little 'gift receipt' in order to use them. At least that's what it says on the back.

My OH's birthday is very soon after Christmas and as a result no one knows what to buy him - including me. This year he had a stack of gift cards which he was eager to spend.

So we were in the queue at M&S and he handed over his gift card.

'sorry, this hasn't been authorised'

'I beg your pardon?'

'S'not authorised, you can't use it'

'But I have the gift receipt here - it says it has £X on it'

'We've 'ad a few of those. 'ed Office sent an email saying there wor 4 days b'for Christmas where the computer's didn't work'

'so what are you going to do about it?'

'you need the receipt'

'I've got the receipt, here'

'no the sales receipt'

'but it was a gift, I don't have that'

'Can't do anything without the receipt ...'

When I contacted my sister (who'd given my OH the gift card) she'd actually bought 4 different gift cards in that transaction, didn't have the receipt anymore and was more than a little stressed that M&S had over £100 of her money and weren't honoring it.

Needless to say it is in the hands of customer services but there are probably many more who bought gift cards over those 4 days and what are those gift receipts for?

Unfortunately the gift card problem doesn't start there. He also had an itunes card except they come in two pieces and the wrong one was put in his card. I think we should nominate a different day to celebrate his birthday ...