Introduction
File this one under one of those obscure events that may never happen to you, but if it does, you know what to do. Anyway, about a month ago, I went and bought $2000 worth of Ebay gift cards at Office Depot. I had put in my chip card, signed the pin pad, and even removed my credit card already. Usually at this point, we wait for the gift cards to activate and then a receipt prints out… but it didn’t.
Error message on screen
Sorry I wasn’t able to take a picture of the error screen, but on the terminal, a message had popped up essentially saying to go get the store manager and that a copy of the receipt needed to be made. The experienced cashier read it a few times and looked confused. Another cashier walked by and read it too and was confused as well. They then called up a shift manager. He also had never seen that message before, and basically pushed OKAY and walks away.
The receipt then prints out normally and the original cashier hands me the receipt. The receipt looked normal. The thing about Office Depot receipts is that it only gives you the gift card number and doesn’t really tell you if the cards had been activated or not. I hesitantly took the receipt and my gift cards home. I then tried to use the 4 gift cards, and sure enough, 1 of them had a $0 balance. So I drove back to the store ASAP.
Back to store
I went back to the store and saw the original cashier and told him what happened. He told me he had made a copy of the receipt and will show it to the store manager the next day. He then gave me the business card of the store manager as well as the 1-800-GO-DEPOT phone number. He told me to call the 800 number after 24 hours, which i did, and of course they had no idea what to do. They told me to go back to the store.
A few days later, I called up the store manager, who knew about the problem, and after a few minutes, he told me he’d need to investigate and give me a call back. A month later (I was traveling), I ran into him at the store and he told me that he had talked to corporate and they would give me the $500 back IN CASH.
Lessons Learned
First off, this is a pretty rare mishap, but there are some things you should do the next time you buy gift cards at Office Depot. At the stores around me, you are able to see the terminal screen. I HIGHLY SUGGEST you watch that screen while the cards are activating. If there is a popup that essentially says to get the manager, you will need to get the store manager involved. Keep a copy of the receipt and tell the store manager, who probably has never dealt with the issue before, that he needs to call corporate and figure out the resolution (which should be your money back.)
At Office Depot 2 weeks ago, I bought a whole bunch of the $200 VGCs. When I tried to unload at WM, one would not work. I called MetaBank and they told me there were activation problems that day and it would be fixed within 24 hours. When the card still would not work 2 days later, I called back and this time, I was told the card had not been activated! I had to audit all my receipts which revealed that the cashier activated one $200 Visa gift card TWICE and the bad gift card had never been activated.
I went back to the store, and the manager had a hard time understanding the issue. Eventually, after close to one hour, he gave me $210 in cash.