SALT LAKE CITY — Bed Bath & Beyond appears to have returned from bankruptcy. You may have already received numerous emails from the retailer touting special deals on rugs, towels, grills — a variety of home goods.
Cindy Soderstrom paid $250 for several gift cards she purchased from Bed Bath & Beyond a little over five years ago.
“It says up here, ‘Never pays. Never expires,'” she said, pointing to the writing on the back of each of these cards.
“Immediately afterward, my mother became ill,” she explained why she could not use the cards immediately.
Caring for her mother took her to a small town in Wyoming that had few stores, none of which were big-box stores like Bed Bath & Beyond.
But don’t worry, Soderstrom thought, because her cards come with a guarantee that they will never expire. But now, back in Utah, the retailer refuses to accept her cards.
“They said, ‘No, thank you very much. Have a nice day,'” she said. “‘Never’ means it’s not going to stop. It should be fine.”
Frustrated, she contacted the KSL investigators.
According to press releases, the Bed Bath & Beyond brand is not only back, but is now based in Utah. Utah retailer Overstock purchased it and incorporated it into a company simply called Beyond, Inc. KSL-TV contacted Beyond several times about Soderstrom’s experience but did not receive a response.
However, Beyond’s website states, “We are unable to accept gift cards that have been issued and unused. Gift cards already issued under the previous Bed Bath & Beyond ownership will have their balance forfeited.”
But can they simply not accept gift cards with the explicit promise of never expiring? In short: yes.
Beyond, Inc. only bought Bed Bath & Beyond’s intellectual property – the brand and the name – but did not assume any of the company’s debts. When Bed Bath & Beyond went bankrupt, it ceased to exist. Soderstrom and everyone else who held her unused gift cards became, legally speaking, “unsecured creditors.”
“This means they are unlikely to be paid unless the company is liquidated at such an amount that additional funds are available to pay,” explains bankruptcy attorney Reed Allmand, who believes unsecured creditors have no legal recourse for their unusable gift cards.
“It may be possible to take action against this at an out-of-court level, for example by contacting other providers and checking whether they comply with the conditions,” suggested Allmand.
For Cindy Soderstrom, it’s a lesson worth $250. “Never” doesn’t always mean “never.”
“Oh, now I’m definitely going to be suspicious,” she said. “My hard-earned money and the words ‘never expires’ meant something to me.”
Other options besides taking the card to a competitor: If you recently purchased a gift card to a now-defunct store and paid for it with your credit card, contact your credit card company and ask for a refund.
If you purchased the gift card from a third-party retailer, contact them to see if you can exchange it for a card to another store. If all else fails, you should keep the card even if it’s technically worthless. It doesn’t happen often, but some retailers emerge from bankruptcy willing to accept old gift cards.
