Raise 1 Year Gift Card Guarantee
One of the biggest drawbacks of buying gift cards from a 3rd party reseller is FRAUD. Most resellers are honest, but the people they buy cards from are not always legit. I generally don’t buy a 3rd party gift card unless I can use it right away, but things happen and sometimes cards go unused. You shouldn’t have to worry that it is going to go bad.
To ease your mind gift card resellers will guarantee a card for a specific period. One of the main reasons I caution against buying from CardCash is their high fraud rate (in my experience) and their relatively short 45 day guarantee. There is simply too much that can go wrong in that short period of time.
For awhile the industry average guarantee period has been 100 days. Gift Card Zen used to guarantee cards for a lifetime, but sometime last year they quietly dropped their guarantee period to just 100 days. Cardpool and Gift Card Mart also guarantee cards for 100 days.
How Raise’s New Policy Works
Thankfully, one reseller/marketplace, has decided to up their guarantee. Raise has now moved from a 100 day guarantee to a 1 year guarantee. This is great news for people who buy from their site. Here is how it works according to their site:
For one year from the date of purchase, we cover:
- Gift cards that are not active
- Gift cards with an inaccurate balance
- Gift cards delivered as a different brand than ordered
- Gift cards not received within 30 days from the date of purchase
We do not cover:
- Requests received outside of one year
- Buyer’s remorse or change of mind
- Misinterpretation of gift card delivery method or timing of delivery
- Misinterpretation of how a particular gift card is redeemed
- Neglecting to apply a promotional code before a purchase
- Cards lost or misplaced by the buyer
- Gift cards that are resold on any platform other than Raise
- Gift cards that are no longer honored when a retailer goes out of business or files for bankruptcy
My Thoughts
This is really good news for customers. Hopefully it will begin to put pressure on the competition to do the same. In an effort to grow market share some resellers have lowered their standards in who they buy from which results in greater amounts of fraud. With the competition raising their guarantees, perhaps this practice will stop which will be a win for buyers looking to save some money.
What do you think? Will Raise’s move force other smaller resellers to do the same?
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[…] It Is Now a Bit Safer to Buy Discounted Gift Cards from One Major Online Marketplace […]
DP: CardCash … I was a naive first time buyer who didn’t think of doing a thorough due-diligence. The $500 value of purchased CardCash gift cards was not available after their “45-day-buyer-protection” period had expired.
After receiving a “tough-luck” response from CardCash, I complained to the AG’s office in my state. It took some time and repeated requests from the office, but I just received an email from CardCash as a “one-time courtesy” that a check has been mailed. Now hoping that it will not bounce !
So apparently there’s hope for all of you who got scammed by CardCash !
Let me start off by saying I’m not a fan of cardcash. With that said, it’s your own fault you didn’t use it in time, nobody else’s. You were lucky that your AG pushed them to refund but CC is not scamming you. Rather, it was some unscrupulous seller of the gift card. Because it’s been 45+ days odds are cardcash will eat that money and possibly not go after the seller. It all gets rolled downhill and probably one way or the other impacts their discounts they’re willing to give on cards.
Bottom line is you know the risk and you know the terms so you shouldn’t complain when something you don’t like happens and you’re left holding the tab after any guarantees have passed.
When I hear stories like this it’s analagous of people doing MS on a targeted Amex offer and then complaining to CFPB/AG when they should’ve known they’re walking a fine line and gambling a bit. If you’re going after the higher Apple on the tree then you should know the risks, such as falling and breaking your neck. Don’t curse wind if you fall. Next time do your due diligence and don’t climb higher on that ladder if the possibility of falling isn’t something you’re willing to accept. In your case, never buy used gift cards unless you know without a doubt you’ll use them within that guarantee and that you’re also willing to invest time into getting refunds on inevitably bad cards.
First 3 cards i ordered from Raise were reversed by Raise, 14 days later, due to them identifying fraud. That’s more bad than good.
I honestly don’t think that it’ll prompt other smaller resellers to follow through with Raise.
From my own experiences and those I’ve talked to, Raise is by far the most likely to lead to a fraudulent card. I won’t get into the details but their business model leaves more room for fraud. It’s not to say that they won’t fix the problem, as evidenced by this guarantee. I believe the new terms are because of issues behind the curtain rather than some generous unprompted decision to support buyers. As you can probably tell I’m not a fan of Raise. In one case I actually had to threaten a charge back (30+ days of unresolved issues) before they acted, all within 24 hours of that point.
Some smaller resellers, as you know, work with bulk sellers and have much lower fraud rates. As consumers buy from larger sites and realize how frequent problems arise they’ll naturally poke around and probably stumble across sites like GCW/GCG. As time goes on and they have less issues with cards they’ll most likely become return buyers and skip businesses like Raise even with a 1 year guarantee. People at the end of the day don’t want to deal with bad cards and won’t return if the hassle outweighs the gain.