Sounds doubtful to me that under EU law, a company can simply deny access to funds in a gift card, even if it's not actual money. Sounds like something a small claims court should be able to resolve, has anyone tried it?
I don't think that they could legally do that in many US states either - many states have laws regarding how long gift cards have be accepted, and some never allow balances to expire.
The article mentions a case where Amazon Prime membership wasn't refunded. The Amazon Prime terms state that it would be refunded on termination. However, it also has the following term:
> However, we will not give any refund for termination related to conduct that we determine, in our discretion, violates these Terms or any applicable law, involves fraud or misuse of the Prime membership, or is harmful to our interests or another user.
IANAL, but would that not constitute an unfair contract term under UK law?
I don't know about EU law, but in Australia we just had an electronics company (Dick Smith) go into administration and refused to honour all gift cards, even though they continued selling gift cards while they were searching for an administrator:
A company in bankruptcy is completely different from one in normal operation. Accepting gift cards during bankruptcy proceedings is against the law, even.