A gift at christmas

First of all, thanks to DoomYoshi and everyone running the passport contest, it's been awesome!
I've really enjoyed it, it's really got me reinvigorated!
So this got me thinking that I would gift a membership to my friend (the one who got me started playing). He hasn't played in almost a year. I tried to by him a membership, but apparently I can't just by a years membership. It takes 3500 credits, but you can't by 3500 credits, you have to get 2500 and 500 and 500. So to gift him the now $30 membership I have to buy $40 worth of credits? I guess it's creative marketing, but it just created a lost sale to someone (me) who never complains about this stuff and would have been even have been happy to pay the $30 fee.
This is so disappointing - I've gone from being re-energized about playing to having a bad taste in my mouth, just because someone thought it would be good business to try to trick me into buying some useless stars for an extra $10? Who knows, right now I'm feeling so turned off I might not even rejoin.
If I've totally misunderstood this (I hope so, I just can't understand anyone thinking that making it so difficult to pay $ could be good for the site) please let me know.
If this is indeed the way it is, hopefully someone will read this and question this practice, because you know that for everyone who takes the time to say something, many more just quit instead.
Tet
I've really enjoyed it, it's really got me reinvigorated!
So this got me thinking that I would gift a membership to my friend (the one who got me started playing). He hasn't played in almost a year. I tried to by him a membership, but apparently I can't just by a years membership. It takes 3500 credits, but you can't by 3500 credits, you have to get 2500 and 500 and 500. So to gift him the now $30 membership I have to buy $40 worth of credits? I guess it's creative marketing, but it just created a lost sale to someone (me) who never complains about this stuff and would have been even have been happy to pay the $30 fee.
This is so disappointing - I've gone from being re-energized about playing to having a bad taste in my mouth, just because someone thought it would be good business to try to trick me into buying some useless stars for an extra $10? Who knows, right now I'm feeling so turned off I might not even rejoin.
If I've totally misunderstood this (I hope so, I just can't understand anyone thinking that making it so difficult to pay $ could be good for the site) please let me know.
If this is indeed the way it is, hopefully someone will read this and question this practice, because you know that for everyone who takes the time to say something, many more just quit instead.
Tet