Gift Cards: What Quebec Law Allows and Forbids a Merchant to Do

A customer walks up to your till with a gift card bought ten months ago. Nothing on it says it has expired, but you wonder whether you can turn it away anyway because it feels "too old." You can't. Quebec's Consumer Protection Act sets out rules on gift cards that go further than most merchants realize, covering expiry, fees, and replacement alike.

No expiry date, ever

For a prepaid card usable as cash, the ordinary gift card a customer buys for a fixed amount and spends however they like, the law forbids putting an expiry date on it. You also can't decide, even without printing anything on the card, that it stops working after some period, two years after purchase for instance.

The principle is simple. The money a customer paid for the card belongs to them until they spend it. A $50 card keeps its full value for as long as it goes unused, no matter how much time passes. If your point-of-sale system or terminal provider prints an expiry date on the gift cards you sell, that's a source of complaints and something to fix, not a minor detail.

This holds regardless of the card's form: a physical card, a code emailed to the customer, or a balance simply recorded against their name in your point-of-sale system. The format changes nothing about the obligation.

Packages for a specific service

A salon selling a package of ten massages, or an esthetician selling a package of hair-removal sessions, follows the same rule: no valid expiry date, even printed on the card. The balance stays usable until the service has been fully delivered.

Two wrinkles apply specifically to this kind of card. First, if the price of the service goes up between the sale and its use, you may charge the difference, but only if the card stated, at the time of sale, the price paid and the date from which a supplement could apply. Second, a card that grants unlimited access to a service for a set period, a monthly pass to group classes, say, can legally carry an expiry date, because it doesn't represent an amount of money the customer can spend however they choose.

The fees you can't charge

The rule on fees is just as strict. A merchant who issues a gift card usable only at their own business cannot charge a fee to hand it over, to activate it, or simply to let the customer use it.

One exception exists, and it applies only to cards valid across several different merchants, a card sold by a shopping centre and accepted at every store in it, for example. In that specific case, the law allows:

• an activation fee of at most $3.50
• an inactivity fee of at most $2.50 a month, never before fifteen months have passed since the card was purchased

If you only sell gift cards redeemable at your own business, neither exception applies to you. The rule that governs you is the first one: no fees at all.

Replacing a lost, stolen, or damaged card

Here the law gives you more room, but only if you set the terms in advance. You may charge a fee to replace a gift card that's lost, stolen, or damaged, provided you told the customer about that fee before they bought the card, not after they come back asking for a new one.

The reverse also holds. If you never committed to replacing a lost card, you're entitled to refuse, especially if you have no way to trace what balance was left on it. That's one more reason to tie every card you sell to a serial or account number inside your point-of-sale system. Without that link, you can neither confirm a balance nor turn down a claim with any certainty.

What to check this week

Pull a blank gift card from your display and look at it. If a date appears on it, or if your point-of-sale system prints one automatically at the time of sale, ask your provider how to remove that field from the template. If you sell service packages, check that the price paid and any supplement rule are actually printed on the card, not just explained to the customer out loud.

Then check your written policy, if you have one: does it say plainly whether a replacement fee applies when a card is lost? If it isn't written down at the time of the sale, you won't be able to charge for it the day a customer shows up with a card that's gone missing. A sign near the register, or a line on the receipt when the card is bought, settles the question for good.