Did Kohl’s ban me for using a gift card from Cardpool

I was talking to my coworker at lunch yesterday (he also resells Kohl’s), and he told me during this last 30% go-round, he tried to buy some Roomba’s with some GCs he had bought from Cardpool, and sure enough, he got the cancellation email.  He called them up and they asked him if he wanted to re-place the order.  He told them no and proceeded to purchase again online successfully.  This was similar to my story; if you call them, they sort of clear your account and you can order again.  Then a couple of days later, he placed another order, but this time he used no gift cards from Cardpool and it worked w/o a call.

The weirder part was that he told me he went in store this past weekend, and tried to use the Cardpool GC’s, and the checkout system wouldn’t take the GCs.  However, he could check the balance online just fine.  I thought that was very weird.

Then for further evidence, Kohl’s sent out ‘mystery’ codes on Saturday.  I was lucky enough to get a 30% off code.  I tried to purchase a Roomba in incognito mode over the GoGo IP address, checking out as a guest (my wife).  When I tried to submit the order, I got a weird error I had never seen before.  I tried a couple of times, but then I gave up.

Did I mention that I had to ask Cardpool to refund a couple of Kohl’s gift cards lately because the web site wouldn’t take them?

I was going to test buying a clearance item on Kohl’s today, but I’d have to buy $75 for free shipping, so I’ll wait to try to reorder from them, this time w/o using a Cardpool GC.  I just wonder if there are scammers who are selling gift cards bought with a stolen cc, in which Kohl’s then flags and nullifies the gift cards.  Or maybe because I buy random denomination Kohl’s gift cards, those were merchandise credit that may be flagged as fraudulent or so.

If you’ve been having issues ordering from Kohl’s lately, did you use a gift card bought from Cardpool or any other site?

4 comments on “Did Kohl’s ban me for using a gift card from Cardpool

  1. I’ve been reselling Kohl’s stuff for a couple of years now but have usually been too lazy to buy discounted GCs first (I usually use the Amex OBC and pick up cards at the supermarket). I had just been thinking about going down this route to increase the margins but am glad I didn’t yet.

    1. I know. I sort of regret it, but the 11% margin boost is pretty substantial. If you’ve been shopping at Kohl’s for that long, if you think about it a bit, there may be around it. Email me if you can’t figure it out.

  2. I always have problems with Cardpool, every order seems to have at least 1 GC that has zero balance, or at least one GC that would give me an error when trying to place an order.
    Cardpool would usually refund me the amount of the GC after a week or so.
    With all these issues and the possibility of getting banned I’ll steer clear of cardpool. Funny thing is I tried to use GC’s that I bought from Ebay from a popular seller “digital paypal” something, I get an error saying the GC code and pin dont match, the balance was still there when i checked it on kohls balance checker.

    1. Nick, this whole Kohl’s/Cardpool thing has me scratching my head. If I place another successful order w/o using a Cardpool GC, then I blame my banning 100% on using “bad” Cardpool GC’s.

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