BY ANGELA DELLI SANTI

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Associated Press

A legislative panel is expected on Thursday to consider legislation reversing a 2010 law that allowed the state to claim the value of dormant gift cards as revenue.

The Senate Budget Committee will vote on whether to remove gift cards from the state’s unclaimed property law. The bill also would prohibit retailers from charging dormancy fees on idle cards or imposing expiration dates on their use, two consumer protection features the industry supports, according to Retail Merchants Association spokesman John Holub.

Under budget legislation signed into law two years ago, the state can lay claim to gift cards that go unused for two years. The law requires gift card sellers to obtain ZIP codes from buyers so the state can claim the value of the cards. Without such information, the value of unused cards reverts to the company or to the state in which the company is incorporated.

New Jersey projected $65 million in revenue from unused cards, travelers checks and money orders the first year the law was expanded, but retailers sued and the law has stalled. The bill being considered Thursday would ensure it isn’t implemented.

The Assembly passed a similar measure in March by a vote of 48-27 with 4 abstentions. That bill also would reinstate a 15-year abandonment period before the state can claim revenue from travelers checks and seven years before it can claim uncashed money orders. The 2010 budget cut both down to three years and trimmed the waiting period on unused gift cards to two years.

Shoppers would still be able to redeem a card after two years. But if the state had already claimed the balance, a business would have to petition the state for reimbursement.

“The governor’s changes were decidedly anti-consumer and anti-business at a time when we should be protecting both,” said South Jersey Democrat Paul Moriarty, a sponsor of the Assembly bill.

Three major players in the gift card market told The Associated Press last month they would quit doing business in New Jersey in June over difficulties complying with the new law.

Two of the companies, Blackhawk Network and InComm, are third-party providers of gift cards sold at malls, groceries and convenience stores. Both they and American Express said they couldn’t ensure compliance since their cards are sold indirectly.

Treasury Department spokesman Andy Pratt said the administration doesn’t intend to backtrack on the 2010 law.

“We’re in the process of developing regulations based on the current law that will address some of the concerns people have,” Pratt said.

School’s out for the summer. Or at least, it will be soon. And that means graduation time and lots of high school and college students moving on to their next place in life. But it doesn’t matter what kind of grad you have in your life; they’re going to need some good tech in that next step. Below are the best gadgets and tech gifts for the upcoming graduate.

Tablet

Apple

Best Choice: Apple iPad (Starts at $399) or Kindle Fire ($199)

The first suggestion isn’t very shocking. The iPad makes a great gift for either the high school or college student. It’s great for all those tablet tasks — surfing the web, reading, watching video, playing with fun apps, and, for those college grads, looking at job listings. The new iPad, which starts at $499, has an eye-popping Retina Display, but the iPad 2 costs $100 less.

Speaking of costing less, we understand that not everyone can afford an iPad, so that’s why we are also recommending the Kindle Fire. The Fire costs $199 and can perform many of the same functions as the iPad — browsing the web, reading, watching video. However, the app selection isn’t as plentiful or powerful.

iPad Case or Cover

Logitech

Best Choice: Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover ($99.99)

Of course there’s always a chance that the new grad already has an iPad (hey, over 3 million people bought the new one in its first weekend). For those who already own an iPad, an iPad case or cover is the perfect gift. In particular, we really like Logitech’s new Ultrathin Keyboard cover.

The cover is a lot like Apple’s Smart Cover with magnetic clips that latch on to the left side of the iPad, but instead of a flat cover, it has a Bluetooth keyboard. Pair the keyboard with the tablet and you can transform your iPad into a laptop of sorts. The keyboard itself is very comfortable and the iPad locks into place really nicely.

Speaker(s)

Jawbone

Best Choice: Jambox or the Big Jambox

This gift makes a great party companion. But that’s the beauty of being young, right? A new speaker or speaker dock is a great gift for an new grad. Our top suggestion right now is the Big Jambox. Pair the speaker via Bluetooth to any device — iPhone, Android phone, iPad, etc. — and the sound will speak for itself.

The original Jambox costs $199 and can be thrown into a purse or small bag. It makes great sound. But the Big Jambox, which costs $100 more, makes even better sound. Both of them sound incredibly good for their size and, with Jambox’s LiveAudio setting, songs have a 3-D effect.

For Forgetful Mom

Roku

Best Choice: Roku (Starts at $59.99)

Whether they’re about to be living in a dorm room or getting a place of their own for the first time, they’re going to want to watch TV, but also avoid those expensive cable bills. A streaming video alternative is the perfect solution to that problem.

There are plenty of options to choose from, including the Apple TV and Blu-ray players with built in apps, but the Roku stands strong as our top choice. Starting at $59.99, the box can connect to a Wi-Fi network and stream Hulu, Netflix, and other options right to your TV when it is plugged in with an HDMI cord. You still have to pay for some subscriptions to Netflix, etc., but you’ll save tons over the monthly cable bill

Money Toward a Laptop

Amazon

You might have noticed that we haven’t recommended the most obvious graduation gift — a laptop. And that’s on purpose. Right now is one of the worst times to buy a laptop, but that will change next month.

Intel is about to refresh its processors (the new version is called Ivy Bridge or the third generation Core processors) and a ton of new laptops from every major computer manufacturer will be coming out in early- to mid-June. There will be new ultrabooks, new budget systems, and new power rigs.

That’s why we are suggesting that you buy a gift card to Amazon or Best Buy. That way the grad in your life can use it to pay for a new laptop when the time is right.

You could also shell out for a new laptop bag. We particularly like the Crumpler Heist for the recent college grad — it fits a 15-inch laptop, but looks very professional.

“While Chipotle makes all of its food with premium quality ingredients from more sustainable sources, it’s still affordable and accessible,” said Mark Crumpacker, chief marketing officer of Chipotle. “A gift card for your favorite graduate and a freebie for you makes it even more affordable for everyone.”

Receipts may only be redeemed for a free entrée during a customer’s next visit, not on the same visit as when the gift card is purchased. Additionally, in order to be eligible for a free menu item, customers must redeem their receipt indicating a gift card purchase no later than June 30. The promotion also does not apply to gift cards purchased online

PORTLAND, Maine, May 10, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Mother’s Day is now only second to Christmas as the largest eGift holiday, reports CashStar, the digital gifting and incentives company. Responding to consumer demand, a number of retailers are currently offering promotions for Mother’s Day eGift Cards. According to a recent survey conducted by CashStar, almost as many mothers indicated that they would most want to receive a personalized eGift or gift card for Mother’s Day as compared to the traditional gift of flowers. To find promotions on eGifts for Mother’s Day, click here or go directly to the retailers’ websites listed below.

Consumers can personalize their digital gift cards with a custom message or personal photo, select the card denomination, and set the day and time the gift should be delivered. There is no cost to ship and no fee to purchase, making it a breeze to get mom something she is guaranteed to love. A sample of major brands promoting Mother’s Day offers include:

– Gap — Buy a $50 eGift and receive a $10 promotional card.

– CHEFS Catalog — Purchase a $100 eGift, receive a $15 eGift, and for a $200 eGift purchase, receive a $25 eGift.

– Uno Chicago Grill — For every Uno’s $25 eGift purchased, receive a $5 eGift.

– Territory Ahead — eGifts of $100 or more will receive an additional $25 eGift.

– Not Your Average Joe’s — For $50 as an eGift, receive a $10 eGift in return.

– Old Navy – Buy a $50 eGift and receive a $10 promotional card.

– Banana Republic – Purchase a $50 eGift and receive a $10 promotional card.

– Jockey – Buy a $20 eGift for $10.

– Levy Restaurants – Buy a $100 eGift, get a $25 bonus card.

“It is no surprise that even mom wants an eGift this Mother’s Day. How people give and receive gifts is changing to reflect how consumers’ lives have gone digital,” said David Stone, CEO and co-founder of CashStar. “Clearly retailers are responding to the consumer demand for digital gifting by offering a growing number of promotions for not only Mother’s Day, but throughout the year as part of their overall marketing strategy.”

To see a full list of Mother’s Day offers, please visit www.clickittogiftit.com .

About CashStar, Inc.

CashStar is the preferred digital gifting and incentives partner for retailers nationwide. These retail brands leverage CashStar to easily and securely integrate digital gifting strategies to increase sales and customer loyalty. CashStar offers consumers an unmatched personalized eGift experience via email, mobile and social channels. It is the only company to successfully combine an on-demand B2C and B2B digital gifting and incentives platform with innovative multichannel marketing strategies. More than 250 brands are successfully partnering with CashStar to drive incremental sales, increase retention and boost profitability including Best Buy, Chili’s Grill & Bar, CVS/pharmacy, Gap, Pottery Barn, QVC, Staples, Starbucks, T.G.I. Friday’s, The Home Depot, and Williams-Sonoma. To learn more about how CashStar is constantly innovating the way businesses deliver personalized gifting experiences to consumers and partners in the digital world, please visit www.cashstar.com or e-mail sales@cashstar.com.

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE: CashStar, Inc.

• Special Promotion: Your Outback Steakhouse has the perfect gift for moms, dads, grads and YOU. Now through June 17th purchase $50 in gift cards and receive a FREE $10 bonus card to use on your next visit.
• Visit www.Outback.com Design your own gift card, find restaurant locations and even purchase Outback gift cards.
•  Outback gift cards never expire and have no fees!
•  Do you have an Outback gift card now and want to know how much is on your card? You can verify the balance by calling the toll free number on back of your gift card. (1-800-242-5353). Your gift card number will be required. The gift card number is the first 19 numbers on the gift card. Do not include the extra 4 digits in the corner of your gift card.

For your convenience, our gift cards can be purchased at many major retail locations including:

A & P, Ahold-Giant, Ahold-Stop & Shop, Ahold-Tops Markets, Albertson’s, Bashas Markets Inc, Bi-Lo, Big Y, Brookshire Brothers, Buehlers, Butera, CVS, Food Lion, Food Master, GGP-Mall Locations, Giant Eagle, Hannaford, Harding’s Friendly Mkt., Harmon City, Harris Teeter, Heinen, Hy Vee, Ingles, Kash N’ Karry, King Kullen Grocery, Kings Super Markets, Kroger, Lowes Foods, Marsh, McKeever’s Price, Chopper, Meijer, Nash Finch, Pathmark, Publix, Roche Bro, Roundys Supermarkets, Sam’s, Safeway, Supervalue – Cub, Supervalue- Sobrara, Supervalue Wholesalers, Ukrop’s, Wakefern, Wal-Mart, Wawa and Wegmans Food.

Please contact your local retailer to confirm if they carry our card.

It’s Always Fresh In the Outback!

Survey Conducted by Harris Interactive Finds Millennials Best Know the Way to Moms’ Hearts

PORTLAND, Maine, May 09, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) — CashStar, the preferred digital gifting and incentives partner for retailers, today announced the results of its first Mother’s Day survey. The survey examined if mothers are truly getting what they want on their special day. While meals out at a restaurant with their family is the most popular choice with one-third (34 percent) of mothers selecting this, 12 million moms* (14 percent) indicate that they would most want to receive a personalized eGift or gift card — that’s almost as many as who want the traditional gift of flowers (15 percent). Moms to Millennials are most likely to have their wishes fulfilled when it comes to eGifting. Thirteen percent of U.S. adults with a mother plan to get theirs a gift card this year.

“The way we think about gifting is changing, and this survey really drives home the growing demand for personalized eGifts,” said David Stone CEO of CashStar. “And consumers have more than caught on that mom’s tastes have changed as evidenced by the fact that after Christmas, Mother’s Day is now the second biggest eGift holiday.”

Specifically, the CashStar Mother’s Day survey found:

– Moms prefer personalized eGifts and gift cards over perfume and jewelry — 12 million Moms* (14 percent) indicate that they would prefer a gift card or personalized eGift, compared to 8.5 million* (10 percent) that most want jewelry and 3.5 million* (4 percent) that most want perfume.

– Millennials are in touch – Millennials (those ages 18-34) are embracing personalized eGifts for Mom with more than four million* (4 percent) of those who have mothers planning to give mom an eGift this Mother’s Day.

– Brunch disconnect – Moms overwhelmingly want to be taken out to a meal on Mother’s Day (34 percent), but only 23 percent of US adults with moms plan to take them out.

– Who knows best? — Sons (26 percent) were more likely than daughters (20 percent) to take their moms out.

* Number derived from CashStar Harris Interactive responses extrapolated to U.S. Census 2010 data

Survey Methodology

This survey was conducted online within the United States between April 27 — May 1, 2012, among 2,212 adults age 18+, of which 1,135 were women and 822 were identified as mothers. Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

About CashStar, Inc.

CashStar is the preferred digital gifting and incentives partner for retailers nationwide. These retail brands leverage CashStar to easily and securely integrate digital gifting strategies to increase sales and customer loyalty. CashStar offers consumers an unmatched personalized eGift experience via email, mobile and social channels. It is the only company to successfully combine an on-demand B2C and B2B digital gifting and incentives platform with innovative multichannel marketing strategies. More than 250 brands are successfully partnering with CashStar to drive incremental sales, increase retention and boost profitability including Best Buy, Chili’s Grill & Bar, CVS/pharmacy, Gap, Pottery Barn, QVC, Staples, Starbucks, T.G.I. Friday’s, The Home Depot, and Williams-Sonoma. To learn more about how CashStar is constantly innovating the way businesses deliver personalized gifting experiences to consumers and partners in the digital world, please visit www.cashstar.com or e-mail sales@cashstar.com.

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE: CashStar

New Jersey Law Causes Companies To Pull Gift Cards

The Daily Record is entirely correct in calling the state’s claiming of unused gift card and gift certificates for balancing the budget a “ridiculous money grab,” but your version of how this misguided law came to be shows your memory to be foggy (“Gift-card law little more than Trenton money grab,” April 4).

To be certain, this law was hatched entirely by Gov. Christie in his first budget in 2010 as a way of collecting the extra $79 million he said he needed to balance the state’s books, and was pushed by the administration despite opposition from the business community. When the governor presented his budget to the Legislature in March 2010, he called this scheme “rationalizing statutory rules with respect to unclaimed property” — which is just a fancy way of saying “money grab.” It was, unfortunately, one of the aspects of the budget that survived among the series of compromises that were made to ensure the state would meet its constitutional deadline of having a balanced budget in place by July 1.

In 2011, I sponsored legislation to reverse the law, only to see it die in the face of a threatened veto by the governor and the prospect that no Republicans would support an override attempt. And despite the business community’s legal challenge, the administration’s aggressive defense of this law succeeded in upholding it and creating the situation we find ourselves in today.

While the Legislature voted to pass the governor’s budget two years ago, your editorial, by failing to place any of the responsibility for this policy where it belongs — with the governor — ignores the law’s history.

Sen. Paul A. Sarlo

Chairman

Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee

D-Bergen, Passaic

AmEx decided this week to pull its co-branded gift cards from retailers’ shelves in the Garden State, rather than comply with part of a law intended to let the state suck any remaining value out of the cards after two years.

The amendment to the state’s unclaimed property law is still being litigated in the courts, so the state hasn’t taken any gift card value yet. But a ruling last month allowed the state to start requiring the gift card sellers to record buyers’ ZIP codes — a key component in the Treasury Department’s effort to establish which cards were sold to New Jersey residents.

Too much trouble, an AmEx spokesperson said.

American Express and the Retail Merchants Association are among those that have sued to overturn the law. It was enacted at the behest of the Christie administration — with the concurrence of the Democrat-led Legislature — to fill an $80 million hole in the 2010-2011 budget.

There’s much more wrong with this law than postal code data collection. While the gift cards’ unused value will not be taken directly from consumers, if the law stands retailers may start putting two-year expiration dates on cards. (Otherwise, they might have to “eat” the value taken by the state to honor cards from customers who show up to redeem them after two years and a day.)

All of this runs counter to the welcome trend of businesses starting to issue “never expire” cards, with no inactivity fees. Consumers yelled long and loud to fight these booby traps.

Does the state really need this money so badly? Does it really need to create hassles for retailers? No, in both cases.

This unwise, confiscatory law also applies to phone cards and travelers’ checks. With the American Express move the start of a revolt by card issuers, lawmakers should repeal the law.

(TRENTON) – Assembly members Patrick J. Diegnan Jr., Paul D. Moriarty and Gordon M. Johnson today stressed the importance of restoring New Jersey’s unclaimed property law, following news that American Express is pulling its gift cards from New Jersey businesses due to the changes made to the law by Gov. Chris Christie two years ago.

Diegnan, Moriarty and Johnson are sponsoring a bill to reverse the Christie administration’s anti-retailer law governing state treatment of unclaimed property. The bill was approved by the Assembly last month.

“We worried about the impact the governor’s anti-retailer law would have and now those worries have materialized in a company pulling its products from New Jersey. This is a repercussion that our businesses simply cannot afford,” said Diegnan (D-Middlesex). “American Express is the first company to pull their gift cards from New Jersey, but how many will follow? In order to protect our businesses and consumers, we must restore the law to its original intent.”

According to a media report, American Express began pulling gift cards sold through third-party retailers last week. As of today, the only way for New Jersey residents to buy AmEx gift cards, which can be used practically anywhere, is directly from the company.

“As evidenced by the decision by American Express, not all change is good. Our concerns about the consequences of the governor’s revisions went unheard. Now that the company has decided to stop selling its gift cards through businesses in New Jersey, maybe the governor and our Republican counterparts will listen and support our bill to restore the law,” said Moriarty (D-Gloucester/Camden).

“The governor’s law has claimed its first casualty. The real losers however are the businesses who lose potential revenue under the revised law, and residents who no longer have the convenience of walking into a shop to pick up an AmEx gift card,” said Johnson (D-Bergen). “Whatever its intent; the governor’s law has failed. It’s time to restore the original unused public property law.”

The bill (A-1871) reverses changes to the laws governing the state’s treatment of unclaimed property made as part of the budget signed into law by the governor in June 2010.

The bill would remove all references and the operative section for the state’s claim on certain unused stored value cards.

It would also re-enact the 15 year abandonment period for traveler’s checks and the seven year abandonment period for money orders, both of which were changed to 3 years.

The bill would restore the previous statutory standard of unconscionability for limiting service charges on traveler’s checks and limiting fees associated with a failure to redeem a credit balance, customer overpayment, security deposit, refund, credit memorandum, unused ticket and similar instruments.

Additionally, the bill re-enacts certain money order specific consumer protections that had been otherwise configured in statute by recent changes.

Lastly, the bill would grant the state treasurer emergency regulatory authority to implement this act and to reimburse issuers that reported unclaimed property under the recent 2010 changes, which would not have been due reportable otherwise.