Update 3/3/20: It sounds like Happy Holidays gift cards are no more too, at least for now anyway. If you try buying one from a store that still has them on their gift card rack, it apparently won’t activate. This is a shame as the cards could be used at both Lowe’s and GameStop, so we’ll hopefully see them making a return later this year during the holiday season.
Update 2/22/20: As per this reply on Twitter, Simon Malls were apparently instructed to remove Happy Guy gift cards from sale at the end of next week, so it does indeed look like it’ll be time to say R.I.P. to Happy Guy.
Every month I check GiftCards.com and HappyCards.com to see if any partner retailers have changed on any of the Happy brands. This has happened in the past, so I like to keep our Happy gift card resource up to date to ensure it provides all the correct information, plus it’s good to know for myself if any new cards and/or partner retailers become available.
While checking the brands just now, I noticed something interesting. Both GiftCards.com and HappyCards.com seem to have removed at least three Happy brands – Happy Guy, Happy You and Happy Kid. I say “seem to” as I can’t remember if Happy You and Happy Kid ever actually appeared on either of those websites, or if they were just available for sale elsewhere.
Happy Guy is a notable omission though. This brand definitely appeared on both websites in the past as it seemed to be one of the flagship brands and I ordered Happy Guy gift cards from HappyCards.com during past Amex Offers.
I suspect this has come about at the insistence of Home Depot. Home Depot was a nice retail partner to have because Happy gift cards frequently go on sale. You could therefore buy Happy gift cards at a discount, buy third party gift cards at Home Depot (Home Depot gift cards were usually the best value option, although eBay was a good alternative if your store had them) and make a profit reselling those gift cards.
Home Depot threw a spanner (is that a British phrase? Should I be saying wrench here in the US?!) in the works in the last six months or so though. There were multiple reports of stores zeroing out the balances of gift cards bought using Happy Guy gift cards, so buying Happy Guy gift cards to redeem for third party gift cards at Home Depot definitely carried some risk and extra hassle.
I’d noticed that Happy Guy gift cards were sometimes excluded as an eligible brand when Happy cards went on sale (e.g. that sometimes happened at Office Depot), which made me suspect it was at the insistence of Home Depot. MetaBank then added wording to the terms of Happy cards excluding the purchase of third party gift cards which was also presumably prompted by Home Depot, although that was never hard coded.
If Happy Guy gift cards have indeed gone the way of the dodo, it wouldn’t be surprising if that was because Home Depot wanted out. Happy Guy gift cards were the only Happy brand that Home Depot were on, so the partnership has presumably not been valuable enough or has potentially lost them money.
If that’s the case, it leaves Bed Bath & Beyond, GameStop, Buy Buy Baby and JCPenney as the best remaining options for buying third party gift cards. Lowe’s is an option on Happy Holidays gift cards, but those are seasonal and so not an option right now as far as I’m aware, unless your local store(s) still has a supply of them.
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