Good morning. It's Thursday. Today we'll look at how unused gift cards add up. We'll also get details on a new study that found that the share of New York City residents who could not afford basic essentials jumped dramatically in 2022.
Do you have any gift cards lying around that you haven't used? A lot of us do, according to an audit by the State Comptroller's Office. It found that there is nearly $40 million in unclaimed balances on gift cards in New York City. Gift cards are often an 11th-hour solution for despairing giftgivers who have not found the right present for someone on their lists — or who have not bothered to shop at all. Some 58 percent of 1,208 people questioned by CivicScience, a Pittsburgh-based research firm, reported receiving at least one gift card as a holiday present last year. But a lot of the cards go unused. In the same CivicScience survey, 56 percent of those who had received gift cards said they had either "a few" or "many" on hand. In New York, Manhattanites seem particularly unhurried about spending their gift cards. Of the $40 million in unclaimed balances, the Comptroller's Office said that card holders in Manhattan accounted for more than a third, $14.5 million — the most in the state. Brooklyn residents had the second-highest total in the state, $9.5 million, followed by Bronx residents with $7.3 million and Queens residents with $7 million. Staten Island, with $1.4 million, trailed Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester Counties, along with the counties upstate that include Buffalo and Rochester. You can claim the balance on a gift card you received if it has been inactive for a certain length of time: five years if it was purchased between August 2010 and December 2022, or nine years if it is newer. The issuers are required by law to report such balances to the Comptroller's Office, which works with retailers to track down holders of unclaimed funds. But the Comptroller's Office can send a notification only if it knows whom to look for and where to look — meaning, if you registered the card with the retailer or if the gift card was purchased with a credit or debit card that can be traced. Still, if you have an inactive gift card that you did not register, you can check with the issuer and the Comptroller's Office. Warnings about scamsThe Federal Trade Commission has said that gift cards are far more frequently involved in fraud than is any other form of payment. "The number of gift card scams only continues to rise," Robert Rodriguez, New York's secretary of state, said last year, when a new state law took effect requiring retailers to post a notice about potential gift card fraud. Rodriguez warned that scammers often ask for the numbers on the back of gift cards. "It is just like giving them cash," he said.
But a class-action lawsuit filed last month said that fraudsters were getting gift card account numbers without talking to the purchasers or the recipients. The suit was filed by Ira Schuman, a vice chairman of the real estate services firm Savills and its co-branch manager in New York; he told me that he bought four $500 Visa gift cards in December 2022 for people in his office. All four told him there was no money on the cards. He gave them other gifts of equal value. The same thing happened when he bought the same type of $500 gift cards again last year. That time, after another round of replacement gifts, he said he called Visa and spent about 45 minutes on the phone, only to be told he had to fill out a form and would be notified in several weeks if anything could be done.
The time on the call made him late for lunch — with a friend who was the managing partner of a law firm. "She says, 'Ira, I think this is a case,'" he recalled. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, said that the cards are sold in cardboard sleeves that thieves can open and reclose after copying the card numbers. The thieves then check a website that shows when money is loaded on, and they use the stolen account numbers to make purchases. The lawsuit, against Visa and two other companies, says that they "have been aware of the rampant card-draining" for years but have not changed the packaging. Visa did not respond to an email seeking comment. Schuman is married to Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, a Democrat from Westchester County. He said he had not known — until I mentioned it — that she had sponsored the bill requiring retailers to post the notice about potential fraud with gift cards.
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A new study painted a troubling picture: Poverty has soared in New York. Here are some of the findings:
My colleague Stefanos Chen writes that the findings are a major setback for the city, where expanded government aid during the pandemic had helped to counteract job losses, rising housing costs and persistent inflation. The report was prepared by a research group at Columbia University and Robin Hood, a large philanthropic organization. James Parrott, the director of economic and fiscal policies at the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, pointed to the city's lopsided jobs recovery. "A lot of the progress made in the prepandemic years in reducing poverty and child poverty has been undone with diverging unemployment rates by race and ethnicity," said Dr. Parrott, who was not involved with the Columbia-Robin Hood report. Mayor Eric Adams said last fall that the city had regained the 946,000 private sector jobs lost during the pandemic. But many of the new jobs are in lower-paying industries, compared with the jobs that disappeared during the pandemic. The industry that shed the most jobs, retail, pays around $54,000 a year. The industry that is hiring the most employees, home health care, pays workers far less — around $32,100 a year. METROPOLITAN DIARY Back in town
Dear Diary: I landed at La Guardia Airport, thrilled to be greeted by the familiar skyline. I had been away for a year. It felt like a lifetime, but the rhythm of the city quickly came back to me. When the car I was in got stuck in traffic on 31st Street in Queens, I decided to make a call. "L & M Deli," a familiar voice answered. "Two Italians, hot, add banana peppers," I said. "To go, please." There was a pause. "It's you!" the familiar voice said. I knew I was home. "It is," I said. "See you soon." — Alisha Bouzaher Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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N.Y. Today: Unused gift cards add up
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