Breakage Dj
Eboni Kleifgen
Understanding what breakage is and how to avoid it is essential whether you are an occasional user of gift cards or an avid collector of miles and points. Read on to learn how breakage is costing you money.
The most familiar example of breakage is in gift cards. Many retailers sell gift cards because they know that a certain percentage of the gift cards they sell will never be redeemed. Some gift cards will get lost, some will get thrown away and some will just get forgotten. In every case, unredeemed gift cards represent additional profit for the issuer.
From a personal finance and miles/points perspective, breakage represents the value that you lose when gift cards, miles, points, certificates or other stores of value expire, are lost or otherwise go permanently unused.
As mentioned above, the most common example cited when explaining breakage is unredeemed gift cards, but breakage can (and does) occur in any store of value. If there is a possibility that some form of miles, points, certificates or credits could go unredeemed, they could be subject to breakage. Here are some of the common places breakage occurs:
Since breakage directly results in profits, it is often encouraged by companies. In addition to breakage that happens naturally through lost gift cards, there are tactics that airlines, banks, retailers and others can employ to encourage breakage. Here are some examples of some common tactics:
In fact, a large part of the business model of gift cards is breakage. Retailers and sellers of gift cards understand that some percentage of gift cards they sell will never be redeemed. Some sources say that breakage rates are typically around 2-4%, but they can be much higher than that.
Generally, the best ways to avoid breakage are to not convert cash into less-flexible means of payment, use the gift cards, points and certificates you do have at the first opportunity and have a system to keep track of your gift cards, miles and points.
Think twice about converting cash into something less-flexible. Many retailers have periodic gift card sales. Getting 20% off gift cards can sound like a compelling value proposition, but think twice about purchasing gift cards to a store where you may not shop often. After all, a large part of the reason for the generous discount is because that retailer expects a significant amount of breakage.
Inevitably, if you participate in frequent flyer or hotel loyalty programs, carry a credit card that offers rewards or receive gift cards as gifts, keeping track of where your miles, points and gift cards are requires some degree of management. Here are some tools that people commonly use to keep track of their miles, points and gift cards and prevent breakage
AwardWallet: AwardWallet is one of the most popular options for tracking points and miles. If you are a collector of miles and points and have multiple credit cards and are juggling transferable points, this tool supports almost every major airline and hotel loyalty program in addition to most credit card points programs. AwardWallet not only lets you see your balances of all of your miles and points accounts in one place, it also reminds you if some of your points are subject to expiration.
Google Pay and Apple Wallet: Both Apple and Google allow users to add gift cards to their respective mobile wallets. This can be a good option to both keep all of your retail gift cards consolidated in one place and ensure that they are available to use when you are actually in the store. While not all retail gift cards can be added to each mobile wallet, most popular retailers are supported.
Spreadsheet: Use a simple spreadsheet to track your hotel certificates and other various credit card benefits. Seeing expiration dates laid out in one place can help keep you on track.
Shoebox: Yes, an actual shoebox. If nothing else, make sure that your gift cards are all in one place and accessible when you want to use them. A shoebox and some envelopes, stored in a single location, can make sure that you know where all of your gift cards are so that you can spend them at the first opportunity.
There are many sites that buy and sell gift cards. Gift Card Wiki is one site that tracks buying and selling prices of gift cards across multiple marketplaces. Some marketplaces pay a fixed price for gift cards, but some allow you to list your gift cards for sale at your preferred price. You might not make the most, but an easy option for dumping gift cards is Coinstar, which is located at most major supermarkets.
Some sites even allow you to get more value if you exchange your gift card for another gift card. This can be a way to get more value out of your gift cards if you exchange specialty retailer gift cards for general retail gift cards or Amazon.com gift cards, which might be more usable for you.
A word of caution: Gift card reselling is a notoriously low-margin business and gift card marketplaces do occasionally go under, causing sellers to lose money. Before selling gift cards online, make sure that you work with a reputable gift card marketplace and that you understand the risks.
Breakage is not a topic that comes up in everyday conversation, but is absolutely a concept that you should be aware of if you trade in gift cards or miles and points. Knowing what breakage is and how to avoid it is the first step toward ensuring that you do not lose money to it.
Beth lives in London and works as a freelance writer on a range of projects. Along with writing regular articles for Medical News Today, she writes for the Horniman Museum, an anthropology museum in South London. This involves recording minutes for conferences, blogging for their website, and documenting their process of curating art exhibitions. She loves theatre, yoga, and cycling in her spare time.
A 2014 study reported that the acidity, or pH, of a shampoo may affect hair breakage. Certain shampoos are alkaline, or basic, which can cause a negative charge on the hair. This creates more friction between hair strands and can lead to hair breakage.
People may not need to brush their hair as much as they think. The American Academy of Dermatology advise only brushing hair as much as people need to style it. Notably, the idea that people should brush their hair with 100 brushstrokes is a myth.
Nutrition plays an integral part in promoting healthy hair. If people are deficient in certain nutrients, they may have weakened hair that appears dry, dull, or brittle. Severe nutrient deficiencies may also lead to hair loss.
If people are tying their hair back frequently in tight hairstyles, or using elastic bands to tie their hair up, this can lead to hair breakage. Tight hairstyles can stretch or break the hair away from the root.
If people regularly wear their hair in tight styles such as buns, cornrows, or braids, it may lead to a type of hair loss called traction alopecia. Although this is a temporary hair loss that the hair can recover from, it can become permanent if it keeps happening.
Elastic ties can also pull tightly on the hair and increase the risk of breakage. People can switch to covered hair ties and wear their hair in a variety of loose styles to relieve pressure on the hair.
Thyroid disorders can cause hair breakage. If people have a thyroid disorder, they may notice very brittle, dry, and dull hair. Hair can also become thinner, or people may notice excessive shedding or bald patches.
The malnutrition and health issues that come from eating disorders can disrupt the natural cycle of hair growth. This disruption can cause hair to break off during the growth phase of the hair cycle, which is called the anagen.
Switching haircare routines can help if hair products or styling methods, such as harsh chemicals or heat treatments, are damaging the hair. Try air-drying the hair and using gentle products that contain fewer harsh chemicals.
Reducing or avoiding causes of hair damage and taking steps to care for the hair correctly can help to keep the hair strong and healthy. This can also help to prevent any worsening symptoms, such as hair loss.
Web browsers are deprecating third-party cookies, so you need to test your site tosee how it performs with third-party cookies blocked. That will help you begin theprocess of transitioning to alternative solutions.
The best way to test your site for breakage without third-party cookies in Chrome is to use the third-partycookie phaseout flag. This flag makes Chrome behave as it will be after third-partycookie deprecation, so it's ideal for testing the user experience withoutcross-site cookies. There are two ways to set the flag:
You can test your site by browsing with third-party cookies blocked using chrome://settings/cookies, but the phaseout flag ensures that the new and updated features are also enabled. Blocking third-party cookies is a good approach to detecting issues, but doesn't necessarily help you validate you have fixed them.
If you maintain an active test suite for your sites, then you should do two side-by-side runs: one with Chrome on the usual settings, and one with the same version of Chrome launched with the --test-third-party-cookie-phaseout flag. Any test failures in the second run and not in the first are good candidates to investigate for third-party cookie dependencies.
When testing your site with the phaseout flag, temporary mitigations such as the third-party cookie deprecation trials and grace period may mean that third-party cookies are not restricted by your site or the third-party services it accesses.
With only the flag enabled, third-party cookies are handled as they are forChrome's Tracking Protection test group: third-party cookies are still allowedin short-term,limited casesto allow critical services to function, and also through the longer-termsolutions of CHIPSand theStorage Access API.
If Block all third-party cookies is enabled fromchrome://settings/trackingProtection (or Block third-party cookies from chrome://settings/cookies, for those notin the Tracking Protection group) Chrome does not allow any access tothird-party cookies or other unpartitioned state, unless third-party cookies areallowed by a Chrome Enterprise CookiesAllowedForUrlspolicy, or the user explicitly grants permission:
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