No matter how well you know someone, choosing a gift for their birthday, Christmas or wedding may be a frustrating and in some cases fruitless process. Giving cash is easy and practical but some individuals may feel it's an impolite or lazy gift at best. Department stores provide a solution to this problem by offering gift vouchers. A problem for some customers is that these certificates are really no better than cash.

Although some department stores have a tracking system for the vouchers, they do not use this as a way to reimburse recipients who have lost their gift.

A Family Money reader brought this to our attention after losing a voucher for a speciality design shop. Even though the shop had a record of the purchase, which included details like the purchaser's name, amount and date of purchase, it refused to reissue another voucher. Our reader pointed out that the voucher had an expiry date and asked if the voucher went unredeemed before that date, would she receive a new one from the shop. They company was reluctant but eventually sent out a new voucher.

In general, most shops do not reissue gift certificates unless a customer is persistent about the issue. A spokesman for Brown Thomas, which has a large wedding registry service, says it does not track the vouchers and thinks it would be difficult because so many are sold.

"Every time we sell them we tell customers it's like cash. There are no expiration dates," said a marketing department spokesman. The retailer is installing a computer system in the near future and hopes to register gift vouchers on the system.

Marks and Spencer's system is similar except the certificates have serial numbers which are recorded for administrative purposes only. A spokesman said the company is examining the possibility of a new euro voucher and tracking is one of the issues under discussion.

Dunnes Stores says its vouchers are treated as cash and, as there have been no problems to date and sales are good, it does not envisage any changes in the system.

"In an ideal world, it would be nice to track them like a credit card," said an Arnott's spokesman. The shop records the number of gift tokens but says if a loss was reported, it would do its best to track it.