9/7/2023 0 Comments Vanilla balance check![]() Total spending on gift cards is expected to reach $28.6 billion in 2022, compared with $28.1 billion in 2021, according to the National Retail Federation. Gift cards remain a popular and often quick-and-easy gift. See what you need to do to register the card - and look for any problems so you complain as early as possible. Now, she'd tell anyone who gets a gift card to check out the balance quickly. "I don't know what prompted me to do it so quickly, call it the angel on my shoulder," Pfeiffer said. She isn't sure what motivated her to go online. Her brother bought the cards one day in late June, gave them to his nephew the next and she discovered that the money was gone the day after that on July 1. Losing $199 all of a sudden was mind-boggling. And so were two other gift cards her brother had bought for another family member. Oddly, the $200 on the second gift card was fine. "It had been done in the wee early hours of the morning." The store wasn't in Michigan, she recalled. The online information for viewing transactions on the Vanilla brand Visa card showed that one purchase was made at an OfficeMax store, she recalled, or some store with a similar name. ![]() "There was a dollar left on it - out of $200 that should have been on it," Pfeiffer said. ![]() She was so stunned that she woke up her son who was still sleeping to ask him if he had already spent the money on that Visa card. She couldn't believe it when she spotted the balance on one card. The next day, she decided to go online to review any rules or restrictions. This past summer, Dina Pfeiffer was overwhelmed by her brother's generosity when he handed her son Niall two Visa gift cards with $200 each on them for his graduation from Clawson High School. ![]() While most gift cards work fine, some consumers are astounded when they go out to dinner or try to buy a new pair of running shoes only to see their gift card declined because of a zero balance after crooks mysteriously drained money off the card. That's up from 21% from a similar survey last year. Who would imagine that a gift card that you just received suddenly had little or no value? How could a gift card have been redeemed when it was sitting inside a holiday card or little gift card tin covered with bouncy penguins?Ībout 26% of people reported being surprised to learn that they gave away or received a gift card with a zero balance, zip, not a dollar left on it, according to an AARP survey. It's another way that criminals who run elaborate fraud rings steal dollars from consumers. Unfortunately, that's what's happening too often during the holidays and other times of the year for those who hand over gift cards. Would you ever dream of buying a beautiful gift, maybe a cashmere sweater or a diamond necklace, and have it gift-wrapped at the store, only to watch your special someone open the box and discover it was empty? ![]()
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