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Comment by pdx | Hacker News Reader

That was discussed here, probably when you brought it up last time. It's the same reason that gift cards expire and properly written NDA's have time limits. Nobody wants to owe somebody something until the universe dies, especially accountants, and especially if the people to whom that debt is owed, are dead or have forgotten about it. It would be insane to carry it on your books until doomsday.

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I disagree with this, it's entirely possible for vendors to honour gift cards (and credits) indefinitely. In fact, here in Canada, in most provinces, if not all, it's law and has been for some time: http://www.gov.on.ca/mgs/en/News/133713.html

I was looking for that. Business make boatloads from unused, expired gift cards.

The problem comes in the accounting. Try borrowing X million dollars against 2X million in assets when you have 4X outstanding debts that can be called in at any time. Sure, they probably won't be, and you might discount them to near zero, but the lender won't be so generous.

But in the sale of the gift cards/credits, at a 1:1 exchange rate, your assets would increase as well as your debt, surely?

Sure, at the time of sale. But you will spend/disburse the money you receive in short order and be left with a looming debt on your balance sheet.

Exactly.... I actually found Skype's way of handling this to be far more fair and less predatory than most - not only were they generous with the expiration date, but they insisted you only had to log in and place a single call (spend a penny or so) to keep it going another 6 months, or whatever.... it's just keeping dead liabilities from accumulating... and skype was NICE about it, sending me all those notifications.

So maybe they should give cash rather than credit.

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