
Show HN: Buy a gift card and support small business - seancoleman
https://giftcardpledge.com
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preinheimer
Something to watch out for (in Canada and the US at least).

Many small stores use gift cards from their credit card processors. They pay
for the physical cards in advance, and may not actually get the funds from
purchases into their bank account until they are used. So buying a card now
nets some money for their processor, but nothing for the store (when they need
it).

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mttjj
Looks like a cool idea but it appears to be nothing more than a public
posting? When I got to the page the top line said "Chad S. pledged to buy a
$100,000.00 gift card at Google in Boston."

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Johnny555
Chad is very generous.

The top post when I went to the page was:

 _< /span> pledged to buy a -$89.00 gift card at Your moma in paris. _

So looks like people are looking for web exploits.

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nyuszika7h
I think I just broke it by submitting it with empty fields...

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seancoleman
Thanks for the heads up. I fixed it!

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nyuszika7h
Fixed it by deleting the database entry rather than actually making the Rails
app handle this case gracefully?

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seancoleman
Both actually.

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nyuszika7h
Hmm, after you said you had fixed it, I did it again and all the pledges
disappeared as before...

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robjan
I have seen people posting this idea on Facebook and am not convinced by the
economics of it.

If you buy a gift card the company may be able to survive in the short term by
covering their operational expenditure. But then it will cannibalise their
revenue in the future when people start to redeem them.

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jonheller
I had the exact same thought. It obviously helps during a cash starved time
like now, but just seems to delay the inevitable. I suppose the assumption is
that, by that point, there's hopefully other financial support in place?

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notpiika
I like the idea, very nice! Have you considered open sourcing it?

~~~
seancoleman
Yeah, I'm planning on it. I just need to move the Yelp API key from source to
an environment variable and then I can switch the repository type on GitHub.

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onyva
I'd like to see a similar pledge from small business owners. Stop supporting
Neo-liberal idiots. It's great while it works, for them, but it's a horrible
mess for ALL of us when it doesn't.

PS. I believe majority of small business owners vote-in pro-business
governments and politicians (from Drumpf, to Nethanyhu, to Boris and the
rest). Mostly Neo-liberal charlatans, which only work to strip public services
to bare minimum in order to artificially boost the economy (i.e. mostly make
their friends even richer) while putting us all in danger.

What we all need is a strong, pro-active, and humane government, which
understands the economy, but doesn't throw us all under the bus.

