Do companies that get taken-over have to honour the old gift card/certificate?
It depends completely on the nature of the takeover. When a business is bought, the new owner takes on the obligations of the prior owner, the debts don't just go away. When a business files for bankruptcy, its debts may get discharged, and gift card holders can easily be the first ones to get nothing back. A case in point was Sharper Image who stopped honoring gift cards even while the doors were open as they filed for bankruptcy. I know this is old, but Joe Taxpayer is wrong.  When you dissolve a corporation in selling it, all liabilities go with the old owners and the new owners, smartly starting with a new corporation and taxpayer ID, start with a clean slate.  The only way this is not true is if the new owners did not change a thing legally and kept everything the same, other than there names, which would be entirely insane if you asked any lawyer in the country.  Gift cards are a touchy situation, if not negotiated in the deal, by law the new owners DO NOT have to take them.  Yes, it's good PR, but when there's a considerable amount of money out there it could bury the new owners by giving away free stuff.
The NY company's board of directors are your agents and fiduciaries.  I'll call them your agents below.  The acquiring company entered into some contract that your agents negotiated.  Whatever the acquiring company owes you in terms of money, equity, or specific communication is based on what your agents dealt for in the sale contract.   Best ask your agents what they got for you. 5.) Target allowed the use of the coupons for gift certificates, negating the profit they would have made themselves. The customers did not create this situation. Target also renewed the coupon system with full knowledge of the circumstances. Corporate systems are hardly capable of knowledgeably allowing injury they can prevent. My understanding it that the signature requirement is at the retailer's discretion. If the merchant decides to require a signature it protects them against fraudulent charge-back claims, but increases their administrative costs. In some situations it just isn't practical for a retailer to require a signature. Consider for example mail-order or online purchases, which I've never had to sign a credit card slip for. You'd have to consult a lawyer in the state that the transaction took place to get a definitive answer.  And also provide the details of the contract or settlement agreement. That said, if you clearly presented the check as payment (verbally or otherwise) and they accepted and cashed the check, and it cleared, you should have good legal standing to force them to finalize the payment.   While they had every right to refuse the payment, and also every right to place a hold on the credit until the transaction cleared their bank, they don't have the right to simply claim the payment as a gift just because it came in a different form than they specified in the contract.  Obviously this is a lesson learned on reading the fine print though.  And, to be frank, it sounds like someone wants to make life difficult for you for whatever reason. And if that is the case I would refer back to my initial comment about contacting a lawyer in that state. Good question. I have no idea what legal recourse they have to reverse gift and credit card purchases.  Cash people are probably safe.  Like I said, it's unlikely they will do anything, but I would not be holding on to gift cards purchased via gift cards if it was my money on the line. "I can't give you proper legal advice, but if I called their customer service and used half an hour of my time to wait and explain the situation in detail, and their official response was ""just use the points,"" I would do just that. Of course you would have stronger legal standing if you had recorded their answer, or had it in writing from them. But I don't think spending these points will come crashing down on you. And morally I see absolutely no problem with spending these points; it is not as if you are stealing from someone else. These points can usually be given away in any kind of crazy manner. Sometimes there are lotteries or events where they give away 100,000 points for new customers who open up an account on a specific weekend. Sometimes they give points to customers who want to terminate their contracts as an attempt to coax them into staying. They have given you a lot of points and don't really care. As a result you are probably staying their customer forever – and will most likely tell this story to many friends. This is free advertising for them. Heck, maybe they would even make a news story out of this some day, it could be good publicity. Everyone is essentially getting these points ""for free"" but in fact the company has a business case by improving their image and customer retention with these points. So you can spend these points with a sound mind morally. Legally you would have to contact a lawyer, but I think chances for legal repercussions are small if you have done your duty, informed them and their customer service basically said it's ok." The way I have seen this done in the past is the business will withhold taxes on the amount of the gift.  Very much like receiving a bonus.  There are probably other ways to do it where taxes are avoided like you boss could buy the gift for you personally.  Not sure about all the legal ways to avoid taxes on this. Yes. Instead of paying a cash dividend to shareholders, the company grants existing shareholders new shares at a previously determined price. I'm sorry, but scrip issues are free (for all ordinary shareholders) and are in proportion to existing share holding. No payment is required from shareholders. So instead of having 10 $1 shares, the shareholder (if accepts) now could have 20 50p shares, if it was a one-for-one scrip issue. "Why would you consider it null and void? It might be that something went wrong and the business ""lost"" the transaction one way or another. It might be something else. It might never appear. It might appear. In one of the questions a while ago someone posted a link of a story where an account was overdrawn because of a forgotten debit card charge that resurfaced months later. Can't find the link right now, but it can definitely happen." I found a german article describing the legal situation in Germany. To summarize As outlined by the many possible reasons in the other answer, it is unclear from the information I have, whether condition 1 holds. Also condition 2 may not hold since the credit card was frozen. I suppose this makes a good argument to MasterCard and my bank, but I also suspect they will not care unless it comes with a attorney letterhead. "Getting ""physical stocks"" will in most cases only be for the ""fun of it"". Most stocks nowadays are registered electronically and thus the physical stock will be of no value - it will just be a certificate saying that you own X amount of shares in company X; but this information is at the same time registered electronically. Stocks are not like bearer bonds, the certificate itself contains no value and is registered to each individual/entity. Because the paper itself is worthless, stealing it will not affect your amount of stock with the company.  This is true for most stocks - there may exist companies who live in the 70s and do not keep track of their stock electronically, but I suspect it will only be very few (and most likely very small and illiquid companies)." Question 1: Who do I report such fraud to? Walmart, or their card processor. They may be in their right to require the original purchaser to do the report. Generally, credit card and debit card fraud must be reported to the bank within 60 days of the statement for them to take responsibility. I don't see why gift cards would be different. You can also report it to the police, but I believe you'll be asked to file a report in the jurisdiction where the card was used. Again - time is of the essence, and there's nothing much they could do with your report now. Question 2: How can I recover the $100 value of my Walmart gift card? At this point, 2.5 years later when the card was used to buy prepaid cards, there's no way to catch the thief and recover the funds. Had you reported it promptly, Wlamart could have block the prepaid cards sold or track their usage, but now is too late. Question 3: Is Citibank in any way liable? (The gift card was   fraudulently used shortly after---within the same month---I received   it from Citibank.) I doubt it unless you can show a pattern. It could be someone working for the Citibank, someone working for the USPS, or someone just stole a bunch of numbers and waited until they became activated. They cannot refuse to accept coins and demand some other payment after providing a good or service.  Legal tender is legal tender for all debts.  But until they provide the good or service, they don't have to accept it.   In this case, you want the service of depositing money.  But by its nature, they have to accept the payment first.  In that situation, they can refuse it.  There is no law that banks have to accept your deposits.  If they don't want you as a customer, that's their problem.   Consider switching banks.  Historically this was easier and some banks may still do things the old way.  Call your local banks and ask.  Perhaps you'll find someone happy to do business with you, on your terms.   As already said, some coin rolling machines will pay you with gift certificates.  If you plan to buy a sufficient amount from the place that accepts the gift certificate, this can get that place to play the fee.  That may help you, although it is obviously a limited solution.  The goal is to make it so that you only make purchases that you would have anyway.  The seller obviously has a different goal.   It's possible to buy coin sorters.  Heck, you could buy one with a gift certificate from a public machine.  Cheap ones require extra work to get the coins rolled and may jam a lot.  More expensive ones do more of the work for you.  Note that a given sorter that works better may be cheaper than another that doesn't work as well.  Cheap is more of a qualitative judgment than a financial measure in this case.   If you carry a small amount of change with you, pretty much everywhere accepts small amounts of change for purchases.  So if you have been always paying with dollars and dumping the change in a jar, instead always give the correct change (coins).  They may still give you dollars in change, but at least you won't get new coins.  And you'll use some of your existing coins.  Of course, this doesn't scale well.   For small purchases, say $1.50, you can often pay the whole thing in change without argument.  Or if something is $18.50, you might give them $10, $5, two $1 bills, and the rest in change.   If you are buying something and can see that they have little change in one of the coin buckets, offer to swap some change for bills.  Sometimes places find that easier than breaking a roll.   With vending machines, use change instead of dollar bills.  Especially use exact change so as not to convert bills to change.  They usually don't take pennies, but they're great with nickels and above.   This won't allow you to use change as a way to force yourself to save.  But it will keep your change down to a manageable level going forward.  And you might be able to use up your existing store.  I'm assuming that this isn't a fifty year coin collection that you are just now starting to process.  But if you have six months of change, you should be able to use it up in a year or so.   I tend to do this.  So I rarely have more than a couple dollars in change.  No one ever tells me that they don't take change, because I don't give anyone a lot.  Maybe $.99 here but more likely $.43 there.  Sometimes I give them, e.g., $.07 so as to get $.25 in change rather than $.18.   It's a little more work at every transaction, but it saves the big clump of work of rolling the coins.  And you don't have to buy wrappers. "So this situation is fraud. -SumGuy: ""Hey Mr. Target employee can I use this to buy this.""  -Employee: ""Abso-fucking-lutely Sir"". The responsibility lies on the store, not the customer in this situation. Terms of service on things like coupons are not LAWS, they are terms a company is telling you they will accept. For this Company to then accept it makes these people a few bucks richer, not criminals. The customers did not lie or hide what they where doing, and the company accepted it. Good on em I say." All of this assumes that this relationship isn't as employer-employee relationship, which would require you to withhold taxes. If you send them a small token of appreciation, and you are unable to record it as a business expense, or some other deductible expense, you don't have to be concerned about how they claim it. They decide if they want to risk claiming it was a gift, or if they want to record it as an expense. Even if you say some magic phrase that you think will impress the IRS, the recipient can still decide declare it as income. To have any hope of being able to treat it as a gift they would have to be able to demonstrate that there is a non-business relationship.  If you can claim it as a business expense, or a deductible expense,  they will have to also claim it as income; because your documentation could point the IRS to their lack of documentation.  Giving them a check or sending the payment electronically will require them to claim it as an income, since an audit could require them to explain every line on their bank statements.