Verley Platt runs a small mail-order business, selling women's hats to cancer patients, and rarely takes a day off. Her brother's birthday gift a few years back - a gift certificate for a massage at an upscale Chestnut Hill spa - was a pointed reminder that she needed to relax.

The trouble is, Platt put it in the proverbial "safe place," then lost track of it. When she finally found it and brought it to 3000BC, the Germantown Avenue spa, the reaction wasn't what she hoped.

"They essentially laughed in my face," she recalls. "They said, 'We don't honor anything that old.' " Instead, spa staffers told her that after a year, 3000BC deducted $5 each month as a "service fee," so the gift's value was long gone.

Platt was shocked, she says. She has been an occasional customer at the spa, thanks mostly to Mother's Day gifts, and enjoys it. Now, she's not sure she'll ever go back.

"I'm more upset about the principle than I am about the money," Platt says. "It just seems outrageous that they would pocket the money without any sense of obligation."

The owner of the Philadelphia spa confirms 3000BC's policy on gift cards. Korin Korman says the rules were set seven or eight years ago - about when Platt's brother bought one of the spa's last old-fashioned certificates.

"This was a gift-card policy that we adopted after looking at the market - looking at other spas and retailers," says Korman, who founded 3000BC about 18 years ago. "We actually modeled this after the King of Prussia Mall."

Korman says the service fees reflected the company's costs and its desire to draw new customers for its offerings, which include not just ordinary massages and waxing, but also anti-aging treatments with exotic names such as "Juvederm," "Radiesse," and "Sculptra."

"This is common business practice," Korman says.

Well, not so much - not anymore. Even at King of Prussia Mall, the market has shifted since Korman last took a close look.

As Holiday Season 2009 gets under way, growing evidence suggests that gift-card issuers are finally responding to customers such as Platt, not to mention pressure from state and federal officials who also heard complaints.

Consumers must still read the fine print on any gift card, especially from local businesses. Neither Pennsylvania nor New Jersey has followed the lead of states such as Florida and Connecticut that have outlawed the value-munching "maintenance fees" and expiration dates that can rapidly turn a $100 gift into landfill.

But initiatives by lawmakers in those and other states spurred national retailers to change. According to a recent survey by Bankrate.com, none of 25 major retailers' cards included a maintenance fee or an expiration date. (To see the survey, go to http://go.philly.com/giftcard.)

The main holdouts have been the most credit-card-like versions of gift cards: cards that bear the logos of Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover and that are backed by banks beyond the reach of state regulation.

Now, even that last line of defense is crumbling. This fall, American Express announced that it was eliminating service fees on cards it issues - including, as it turns out, at King of Prussia Mall.

King of Prussia Mall gift cards cost $2 to issue this year, but that's it - they maintain their value thereafter. The mall also markets a use-anywhere version for $3.95 with the same basic terms.

Amex sounds a lot like Verley Platt when it explains its reasoning.

"The feedback we received from customers about the fees was overwhelming - that they were undermining the value of the gift," says Amex's Marina Norville.

Dan Horne, a gift-card expert and marketing professor at Providence College, says Amex surprised its bank-card competitors. Horne predicts that they'll eventually follow suit "or get beaten up on sales."

After 12 months, Visa, MasterCard, and Discover gift cards typically lose value at the rate of $2.50 a month - a fee that the new federal credit-card law will still allow come next year, but only after a gift card has been used.

Those who recall how essential another Amex product - travelers' checks - once seemed to tourists may see method in Amex's apparent magnanimity. Travelers' checks also never expired or evaporated, and they were a cash-flow cow for Amex.

"Some people took that $100 check and put it in a drawer and saved it for a rainy day," Horne says. Meanwhile, Amex could invest the cash for earnings and reduce its capital costs.

So is Verley Platt just stuck with a worthless old piece of paper? Maybe not.

The fine print on Platt's 3000BC gift certificate doesn't mention a monthly service fee. Instead, it says it expires six months after purchase. Under an odd twist in Pennsylvania law, service fees can slowly erode a gift card's value, but that value can't suddenly expire.

Instead, under the state's unclaimed-property law, the funds are supposed to be turned over to the Pennsylvania Treasurer's Office, which currently holds $10.2 million in gift-card proceeds in 109,000 accounts. (You can look, too: http://go.philly.com/unclaimed.)

Platt's money doesn't seem to be there. If she asks why, the spa may simply honor the certificate. Until they answered the siren call of the "service fee," that's what most Pennsylvania businesses did.

Contact columnist Jeff Gelles

at 215-854-2776 or jgelles@phillynews.com.