Donated Gift Certificates

Gift certificates are sometimes donated to various organizations as a form of advertising and to promote goodwill. This is the correct way to handle a customer who presents one.

1. Realize that the experience this person has will be repeated to others again and again, good or bad. Your job is to make it fantastic!
2. Qualify to see if they want to spend only the certificate amount, or more.
3. Realize that the person who can only spend the Gift Certificate amount may not be a returning customer in the near future and it could seem that they are unimportant. The less important a person feels the more they want to be treated as though they are important. To make them feel unimportant will cause bad feelings and maybe even garner us a bad Yelp review! As Dale Carnegie says, “Make the other person feel important, and do it sincerely.”
4. All items priced at less than $1500 are to be sold at full retail.
5. If they don’t see anything they like, invite them to come back another time when we’ll have different items in stock. They should leave wanting to share a great Leo Hamel Fine Jewelers experience with their friends and family.

Rules regarding donated gift certificates:

1. It is a gift certificate, good for credit towards a purchase only. It is not redeemable for cash.
2. If only part of the amount is used, the balance is given as store credit and the fact that it was originally a gift certificate is indicated on the store credit.
3. It is not transferable, and can only be used by recipient.

Stats for Sales using Gift Cards as Payment:

The store is essentially buying this business for the salespeople by offering a discount and for every gift card that is taken in; the store loses that profit on the sale. To also pay out the full commission on what for the store is an under-minimum sale doesn’t make financial sense.

Taking a gift card as payment on a sale can make that sale go under minimum. To calculate the commission, the amount of the gift card is subtracted from the amount of the sale; if the results are under the minimum selling price then the 3% under minimum commission applies. If the sale is still over minimum after subtracting the gift card then the full commission applies. The gift card is not subtracted from either the GI or the GP when statting the sale; it is only subtracted to determine whether or not the commission will be 3% or 7%.