Ani P.

I am writing this review because I feel very disappointed with CardSwap.

They are not a scam, they seem legit, that's not what upset me. It's their process and the people behind it that are very unprofessional. The customer service is below any applicable standards. This company gives me the vibe of a cheap startup that is having hard time making good deals. I'll explain what I mean.

I had a high value gift card from Apple. As anyone would do, I went on their website, passed their evaluation and was offered 85% of the card amount, which was supposed to leave them with a pretty good profit of 15%. I accepted the offer and followed their instructions to the letter. And here the problems started. When I went to the post office to send my card, the officer informed me that the ZIP code of the address they provided is invalid. Now, here is what I think, this business the way they run it, involves a lot of trust be put in the company initially; you need to send them your card with no guarantee whatsoever of what is going to happen next. All you can work with to raise your confidence level, is one positive testimonial on their website (and I am yet to see a website owner publishing a bad review about their activity!) and some scarce reviews online. Yet, just when you are ready to make your leap of faith, something so stupid like a invalid ZIP code does not play well on your level of confidence. That was just the first warning sign.

Then they received the card and confirmed it, explicitly telling me that they will send me the check in the next 2-3 business days. Needless to say, that did not happen. I started to feel that I've been scammed, but decided to be patient and I waited for a week before sending an inquiry to their customer service. Again, this is my opinion, but I believe when you as a company are asking for trust without having proven yourself in any way, the least you should do is deliver on your promises. Instead, I received an email in which, without any excuse, I was asked if I had the original receipt for the gift card. And this upset me really bad. Nowhere in the process, not in the evaluation when they knew the amount of my gift card, nor later, when they gave me instructions on what to send with the card, was the original receipt mentionned. It doesn't even make sense that the receiver of a gift card would have the original receipt, because guess what, it's a gift card! Nobody gives gifts with the receipts attached to them! This company's business is gift cards and yet, they are assuming that my card is not gifted, but somehow I decided to buy it for myself and then offer it to them just so I can lose 15% of its amount?! When I asked them this same question, they told me that this is part of their verification procedures, which again, was not published anywhere. Moreover, I could not easily swallow the fact that I was not asked about the receipt immediately after they received the card, they stalled and waited for me to start sending emails to ask for it. I felt like they were just inventing procedures and excuses not to deliver on their commitment. Even so, I explained to them that the card was gifted to me by my company and since this was all around Christmas (delay caused by them!), I would need a few days until business resumes to ask for the original receipt. They did not answer to that to confirm or infirm, it seems that I just did not deserve that much attention at that point. I was pretty confident I can get the receipt although my brain was screaming at me that this is not right since if I had been told since the beginning that they needed it, I would not have wasted so much time and effort. The moment business resumed, without waiting for me to get the receipt, they sent me another email informing me that they will return my card because it was missing required documents. They did return my card and I checked it on the Apple site. The amount was still there.

Now, this is how I am reading their behaviour: this is a company who deals mostly in the range of 50$ to 200$ card values. My card was for 500$. Once they received it, they got scared that they wouldn't be able to sell it. Well, they should have realized that since the beginning and refuse it with an explanation before I invest effort and money into sending it. Instead, they decided to play posum and started looking for reasons and inventing requirements just so they get out of the situation clean, which I find very unethical. When they ask you to send the card with a registered email they tell you that they will reimburse your expenses up to 10$. That was a lie too. They did not reimburse me, they sent me a coupon for 5$ that I am supposed to use when I send them cards in the future. Very smart, sending me a coupon for services they made sure I will never use...

So this is the aftermath of my transaction which did not happen. This company made me waste time and money and at the end, nothing they did was worth it. They are cheap and they would lie to you so that they get away with it legally. Their customer service is unethical and unprofessional. I leave it to you to decide if you will ever use their services.

UPDATE: 2 months later I decided to delete my account with them and here my issues started again. Unlike most self-respecting companies that offer an option to their customers to delete their accounts on the website itself, so their time is not wasted in stupid email conversations, Cardswap require you to contact them and you also need to somehow intuit it; they don't bother to explain what the procedure is anywhere. So I submitted a form with the request to delete my account. They sent me an email a day later saying that they deleted it. I still had my profile open from the previous day, so I went and checked if it's deleted. And, of course, my profile was still there, the only difference I noticed was that they prefixed my email with 'xxx_'. My profile was still accessible with the new prefixed email, nothing was deleted. I asked them again to delete it, this time I also asked them to remove my data from their database. I just don't feel safe with my names, address, phone number and email (now prefixed, but still pretty readable) sitting in their database, which can be breached at any point in time. They insisted they have deleted it this time. Of course, they hadn't. I was still able to log in and see all my data. I attached screenshots and repeated my request. I also asked them to pass my request to someone who has at least a basic idea on how accounts work. This time I am not going to wait for their reply, I will just replace all data in my account with garbage. It seems that you can't even get rid of them...

Beware customers, your data may not be safe at all with Cardswap and due to their incompetence, it is not trivial to delete it.

I came here to write a very negative review of this pitiful excuse for a company, but when I saw the horrors other people have experienced with them, I felt like I have really nothing more to add to an already desperate situation... Anyways, as I already started writing, I'll share my sad story hoping that some day some hacker with good heart will take this upon them and bring down their scamming website.

I ordered two items back in October 2019, a coat and a sweater. The coat arrived about a month after I bought it, it looked worse than in the picture, but hey... I should be grateful, it actually arrived. The sweater never made it to me. I started writing to their Customer Service in the beginning of January, 2020 and after a dozen of e-mails exchanged (that's how long it took the customer service representative to figure out that sometimes orders have more than just one item in them), I was told that the sweater was cancelled by the system and a refund was being processed. So, nobody cared to tell me about that cancellation when it happened, nor about the reason it was cancelled, yet, all this time, I kept receiving annoying promotional e-mails, between 2 and 4 every day and no matter how many times I tried to unsubscribe from them, I never managed to do it. When I complained about that, low and behold, they cancelled my account! And this is how I ended up with a pending refund, and not being a customer any longer so I can't even claim it.

Stay away from these scammers doesn't even begin to cover it but there seems to be only so much I can do...

You would expect that Apple, one of the richest and most established companies in the world, surely know how to treat their clients, especially given the fact that their inventory is not exactly in the cheap range. Well, not really...

Here is my story for whoever might be interested to know how I saved 800 Canadian dollars and probably much more just by stopping taking sh*t.

I wanted to buy an iPad Air 2. This happened a few days before it was discontinued. I could not find it in the store, the guy in the store encouraged me to buy it online, so I thought I was catching the last train by ordering online and (at least for a week) I was considering myself really lucky to have it before it stops being available at all. I did not really like their new iPad, I never wanted to buy it and I still find it a step down compared to the Air 2 model that it came to replace. I also bought with the same order a keyboard that is only compatible with the Air 2 model.

Then I started waiting... day after day for a week, I would go to my account to check the status of my order. The keyboard was shipped the next day. Not a very smart action, given the fact that they had known all along that they will not deliver the model of iPad that I had in the same order with this keyboard and that this keyboard is only compatible with this specific tablet model. The iPad would remain in a Processing state for a week until one beautiful day someone quietly replaced the Air 2 model that I had ordered with the new one that I never intended to buy. Turns out they have known this entire time that they would not be able to deliver the Air 2, yet they kept taking orders online, nobody cared to at least inform the client that they might not be able to deliver that same model. I was allowed to order it online, I had to wait the entire week until they are able to start shipping the new one and then, without anyone asking me whether I even want the new one, they just modified my order the way it suits them as if they did not need my permission or agreement and as if I was someone that doesn't really know what they are ordering. My e-mail and phone number were in the order all that time, yet no one contacted me to discuss the issue.

In short, I cancelled the order and had to waste more time going through all the steps to return the keyboard. Although they have implemented a sophisticated speech recognition automated phone system, apparently, they were not able to implement a simple automated system for returns, so you have to call them.

Now, I have been a longtime Apple user. I have an iPhone, an iPad (that I was trying to replace), an iWatch, I was considering a second Apple laptop. I surely deserve more respect from this company.

Goodbye Apple!

It was nice working with you most of the time, right until it wasn't and I was showed how much you really care about the people thanks to whom you are in business.

Ordered an item on January 25,2016, it is March 20,2016 today and the item is still "on track" and they are still asking me for 2 more weeks (for a second time! Mind you). Which part of the world do you think this comes from? I've placed some orders from China since January 25 and they all arrived in 2 weeks absolutely free of charge. Are you still wandering why North American economy is not-so-slowly taken by China?
This is what happens when you have a bunch of "administrative personnel" that does not produce anything, just wants to make money from reselling what other people have produced, and doesn't even manage to do that right. They have absolutely no clue of what is going on with their business and I would strongly recommend that you stop wasting your time with joke-companies like this one.