An old chestnut...the gift certificate from out of the very distant past

[birdwatcher]

Ok i made a boo boo..but thats how we learn nonetheless. Sorry about that and you are all right, don't accept it. I've never heard of no expirations on GCs I've always put an expiration date and their name and for the $$ of one night or two whatever it may be and our names where always at the bottom.
Wow; didn't really know that it was such a problem as a scam, I guess anything is possible. But you are right I should have thought of that.

 

[Samster]

At closing, all outstanding gc's need to be paid to the new owner. That is the way we had the clause. This is where I think the PO's did have some outstanding but never told us about them, since they used index cards for record keeping, and took all of them as well.
We had zero guest information, zero anything except a big box of expired directories and other things we had to renew and had expired. That was the other rqmt a buyer should insist upon, "all directories and current marketing must remain up to date and active." As closing takes so long these days they never renewed any of it. We started from scratch essentially. Had to pay NEW set up fees on a couple of them. Didn't know what worked and what didn't work either. Hard to tell when POs lie to you about revenue..

I agree...Listing any outstanding gift certificates and paying the new owners for the total amount of them would really be standard practice for any business.
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I agree...Listing any outstanding gift certificates and paying the new owners for the total amount of them would really be standard practice for any business.

Not necessarily..the author of "Running a Bed & Breakfast for Dummies" talks about how buyers and sellers often negotiate an agreement about outstanding GC's. See her examples here.
As with any business (or residential) sale, absolutely everything is negotiable. Whatever both sides agree on is what happens.
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LB, my post read standard practice. Of course anything is negotiable in any business transaction.

 

[Copperhead]

Since you have no record of this GC and the possiblity of a scam is high, due to PO having a GC on their site (if I read it correctly), there is no way I would accept it.
These scam artist are everywhere - and will do anything they can to scam you. Being small business owners, known to try to make our guests happy, we may look like easy prey. I invested in a embosser with my B&B info on it. (purchased orginally for envelopes) After I sign the GC, with a unique number sequence, I emboss over my signature. Trying to duplicate the signature with the embossing is very difficult - not impossible, but we are not talking about major criminals here.