Why you should not buy PC (Presidents Choice) gift cards

The Weston family pretty much have a stranglehold on grocery stores in Canada with Loblaw. Loblaw is parent company that own tons of grocery stores across Canada. A few years back they had even purchased Shopper's Drug Mart which is a huge pharmacy chain across Canada. Needless to say they have a ton of stores across Canada. They're like the Wal-Mart of Canada.

Loblaw owns this huge label called Presidents Choice. PC is the short term that they use. This label is placed on a lot of their products including food to credit cards. To buy gift cards to their chain of grocery stores you buy a PC gift card. This is innocent enough since so many stores already do this.

The problem is that Loblaws is it's own worst enemy. They have created a PC point incentive system. It works similar to credit cards where the more you buy the more points you will accumulate. PC was ambitious enough to invent a subscription service that allows you to collect even more points faster.

This PC point system had hackers salivating because they were able to use people's points for their own benefit. They would use points and use the money to place into PC gift cards to purchase things in any of Loblaw's stores. Loblaws put an end to this and they put other preventative measures to make their PC gift cards even less valuable.

They will not allow PC gift cards for purchases of any other gift card, lottery tickets or alcohol. To add to this growing lists of restrictions they won't allow you to use PC gift cards at their pharmacy Shoppers Drug Mart.

You'd think with all of the acquisitions by Loblaws, they'd make their PC gift cards more valuable to customers. Instead they're worried about misuse of gift cards even though they removed the ability of transferring PC points to PC gift cards. There's no reason for any of these restrictions.

So there's a ton of restrictions but you can still use it at the Loblaw to purchase food and other things right? Yes, at least I have that. Or so I thought that's what I had. They created self serving check out areas that don't even allow for you to pay with PC gift cards! You have to ask for an attendant to get the PC gift cards to go through.

That's not the worst of it. Since these PC gift cards are so undesirable nobody uses them. So every time you go to a cash register no one knows how to punch these gift cards through.

Loblaw really has to reevaluate the way they do PC gift cards if they really want people to be buying them. It is becoming more of a hassle for customers to have these things. Customers even have to keep track of how much is on these cards because it works as a debit card. You cannot over withdraw from the card so you have to estimate what's left on the card. This is a really dumb problem to have.

In conclusion, if you're looking to buy a friend or family member a gift please stay away from PC gift cards. They'll be more of a hassle than you think. They'll be restricted from buying whatever they want in the store and can only spend it at some of their stores. They'll also have to keep track of the amount on the gift card at all times even though they might not use it that often.

However, if you have to give something to someone you don't like I would suggest getting the gift card spending some of it and then handing it to them. They'll be annoyed as hell when they get to the cash register. It'll be pure humiliation for them at check out time.