Near Christmas, there are often gift card specials at restaurants–like give a $25 card, get an extra $5. We will take advantage of those at places we eat often, but of course, the trick is not buying so many gift cards that mean you will eat out more often!

Anyway, we bought one at Max & Erma’s before Christmas year before last. Actually, I think we bought two. A few months later, we went to use the last one and pulled into the parking lot and…it was gone. Gone! They closed both of the locations near us in one weekend, along with a bunch of others around the country. Anyway, I came home and looked for the nearest location and found one in Cincinnati. Driving two hours just to eat dinner at a regular old chain restaurant? No thank you.  So I did what anyone would have done–I stuck the card in my wallet in the event that we found ourselves somewhere near a Max & Erma’s, and promptly forgot about it.

Anyway, it struck a nerve with me recently, when I was cleaning out my wallet, and I noticed on the back of the card that they would deduct $2 per month after two years of inactivity. That’s coming up pretty soon, and I’d just as soon not watch $25 go down the drain, so I called the number on the back of the card. They tried to direct me to another location, but when it turned out that it was so far away, she gave me the phone number of their parent company and suggested that they would be able to reimburse me (which is what I was hoping for.)  I had a hard time getting someone on the phone, as the customer service guy never answered his phone or returned a message, so I kept calling and finally, this week, he returned my call.

(I finally inquired politely in my last voice mail as to when the appropriate time to call this number would be, as I had made several phone calls and no one ever answered the phone or returned voice mails. Four or five days later, I actually got a phone call! Never give up. ha!)

The point of the story, of course, is that they’re sending me a $25 check for my worthless-to-me gift card.  If this ever happens to you, keep it in mind that they may be willing to work with you if you give it a little effort.  Alternately, you could try selling it on eBay or one of the gift card swap sites, but I  hated to lose part of the value if I didn’t have to.

p.s. It’s not weird to just suddenly post something after six months, is it? ;)