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I guess I lead a sheltered life or something, but I didn’t know about this:

Los Angeles resident James Myers stopped by a Target store in Culver City recently to buy a $25 gift card. Easy, right?

Not so much, it turns out. Inspecting his receipt, Myers discovered that he’d been charged $29 for the transaction. He was told that the price included a $4 “activation fee.”

….Target isn’t the only gift-card provider to charge an activation fee. American Express, for example, charges up to $6.95. Visa gift cards can come with activation fees of up to $5.95.

That’s from LA Times consumer columnist David Lazarus, who notes that not only is $4 outrageously high for swiping a piece of plastic and pressing a couple of keys, but “the company offering the gift card already benefits in other ways.” Like, say, taking in money now and getting to keep it until the gift card is used. Or the fact that some gift cards get lost and never redeemed at all. But enough is never enough, is it?

By the way, in the same column Lazarus reports that Wells Fargo and Bank of America have no intention of changing their habit of reordering debit card transactions even though Wells was just fined $203 million for doing it. “Say this about big banks,” Lazarus writes, “They’re persistent.”

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PLEASE—BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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