The NSW Government is introducing a mandatory minimum expiry period of 3 years for gift cards and gift vouchers sold to a consumer in NSW, as well as a ban on post-purchase administration fees, starting 31 March 2018. The new requirements have been made by amendment to the Fair Trading Act 1987.
The changes aim to strike a fairer economic balance for consumers and businesses in the gift card market. The reforms give consumers access to the full value of their gift card over a reasonable period of time, while maintaining a workable business model for traders.
When will the changes start?
The reforms will start on 31 March 2018.
The reforms do not apply to gift cards and vouchers purchased before 31 March 2018. The terms and conditions in place at the date of purchase of those cards will continue to apply.
Information for businesses
The NSW Government is introducing a mandatory minimum expiry period of 3 years for gift cards and gift vouchers sold to a consumer in NSW, as well as a ban on post-purchase administration fees, starting 31 March 2018. The new requirements have been made by amendment to the Fair Trading Act 1987.
The changes aim to strike a fairer economic balance for consumers and businesses in the gift card market. The reforms give consumers access to the full value of their gift card over a reasonable period of time, while maintaining a workable business model for traders
When will the changes start?
The reforms will start on 31 March 2018.
The reforms do not apply to gift cards and vouchers purchased before 31 March 2018. The terms and conditions in place at the date of purchase of those cards will continue to apply.
Does this apply to gift vouchers as well as gift cards?
Yes. Information on this page should be read as applying to both gift cards and gift vouchers
Three-year minimum expiry period
The new law sets a mandatory minimum expiry period of 3 years for most gift card products. The period begins from the date a gift card is sold to a consumer (issue date).
Businesses can choose to apply an expiry period longer than 3 years and no maximum expiry period applies.
Some businesses have already implemented the change, offering either a 3-year minimum expiry period, or no expiry date, on their cards.
There is an exemption on this which is for vouchers the venue offer customers which is FOC, so things like complimentary vouchers, birthday offers, etc we can have a shorter time frame on.
To read the full details and information about these new changes, and what you’ll need to do etc can be found here via the Fair Trade NSW Website.
Whenever anything new comes into legislation which is around compliance or changes to an act, I’d suggest that and your team familiarise yourself with this information.
Create a spreadsheet with the names of all of your management and staff on there, allocate a time whilst on shift to read and undertake this mandatory reading and have them sign off that they’ve done so.
Not only will this cover yourselves should an audit or any mystery shopping or compliance occur, but if you’ve team members not following thru, you can then have grounds to use this documentation for internal processing or disciplinary action. While there is a transitional and grace period, the fines down the track are a not so cool $5500.00.
While it says that any vouchers prior to the 31st do remain on the terms they were purchased with, I would suggest you just apply a 3 year expiration to this now. My recommendation would be to get a jump on updating and checking all of your collateral, vouchers and marketing to ensure compliance ahead of time. There’s nothing more stressful than doing stuff at midnight the night before.
Set internally a start date to activate and implement this training with your staff, as well as developing a checklist for all other tasks, as well as having a completion date and deadline to have all of this done by.
Keep a copy of all of this information, along with the steps you’ve taken along with your staff records and completion details on file as well as make this a key component of induction and training material for any new staff that commence with your business and brand moving forward.
When in doubt, just accept the vouchers. It’s a far greater gesture of good will to accept than be a dick and don’t.
Until next time,
Chrissy