All Access Gift Card Use it or lose it, otherwise sorry is all you're going to get Internet

Good news is that I found a gift card I received that I thought I had lost, bad news is that it's 3 years expired.  However, my understanding is that in CA for gift cards that was purchased for the same price as the face value does not expire.  When I called customer service, she had nothing but scripts to read from one question to the next.  Basically, sorry but the maintenance fees drained your account, so you're left with nothing.  I know if my friend had known about this at the time of purchase, he would have just given me the cash instead.  Terrible business that basically profits off of others' misfortune of misplaced cards.  There are other gift cards that have no expiration date, so if you want to still to give a credit/debit card, make sure it's not all-access because it's not really "all-access", in my case, "no-access"!