I purchased a $202.23 Lowes gift card from GiftCardRescue.com (GCR) on December 11,2015. I placed an online order at Lowes.com on Jan 16,2016 that left a remaining balance on the card of $138.21. This balance was last confirmed by Lowes in May 2016.
In February 2016, Lowe's made a policy change that required all Merchandise cards to only be usable within the brick and mortar stores going forward and required the physical gift card be used. It took two months of back and forth discussions with representatives of Lowe's at their 800 number, by email and with numerous layers of management within my local store to determine that this policy change had occurred.
After determining this, I followed up with GCR by email on March 19 asking about the physical gift card to which I received the following response on March 28th:
"David, We are aware of the policy change. Unfortunately, we were not made aware until after the change had taken place. However, we have taken steps to rectify the situation. We can ship the physical card out to you so that you are able to redeem the card in stores..."
My response on March 29,2016 was:
"It would be very helpful if you are able to mail me the physical card..."
I then had to follow up again on April 12,2016 due to lack of response. This email chain to date was using the Contact Us mechanism within the GCR website. After still not receiving a response into early May, I sent an additional email directly to their customer service address asking for an update to which I received the following response on May 12th:
"We truly apologize for the experience you are having with your order M4UQ. Your request has been received outside of our 24 hour refund period. A supervisor must review your request. Any refunds offered will be applied to the GiftCardRescue.com account associated with this order. Attached is your refund request form. Please complete the refund request form and send it to the information below. Once your documents are received we will pass this along to our supervisor. You should be updated with within 7-14 business days after your documents have been received."
It is important to note that I have never once asked for a refund... I only asked for the actual card that I had already purchased and was told by GCR was available. I repeated this request in my response but played along and filled out the refund request form, submitted it along with over a dozen other documents as evidence on the same day of May 12th.
On May 17th I was asked to fill out another different refund request form which I again played along and submitted same day.
Again due to lack of response I asked for an update on June 9th and was then told that my request was denied due to being outside of the refund period with no response to the original request for the return of the gift card.
I have filed a complaint with the BBB and will likely be filing a small claim case against them.
They owe me $160