My Pet Peeve about Buying Gift Cards on Exchanges, and Why Everyone Should be Using Giftcardzen

Whenever anything complains about buying gift cards from second-hand gift card exchanges, the first thing that comes to mind is always the bad, fraudulent cards. Card didn’t work, hard time getting refund, etc. I’m not the biggest gift card buyer, but luckily most of my cards have been good, and when it wasn’t I’ve been able to get a refund with relative ease.

Here’s my issue with buying from gift card exchanges. Virtually any time I’m buying a gift card, I need it for immediate use. Not next business day, not tomorrow, not even in an hour. I need it now.

Some exchanges are better than others about doing instant delivery, you can check out this chart for some interesting data. The bottom line is that it varies a lot by who you are. If you have a track record of buying daily, the exchanges are more likely to send it your way without any manual review. A sporadic purchaser is more likely to need manual review on large purchases.

Usually, Raise is considered to be the best about sending out gift card instantly (I think?), but even with Raise – a merchant I’ve made tens of thousands in purchases over the years – I’ve had times where manual review was required and it took a few hours or overnight. Usually it’s when there are back-to-back large orders or when using an IP address other than my own.

Here’s where Giftcardzen wipes the floor with all the other exchanges: Giftcardzen has an awesome feature where you can cancel a gift card purchase anytime until you open it. So not only can you still cancel after purchase until delivery, you can even cancel after getting the email stating the gift cards are ready.

As an example, just now I purchased a small Target gift card from Giftcardzen. The order came instantly to my email, but the card number is not shown in the email. Instead, there’s a link in the email which is used to download the codes. At that link, it gives the option of cancelling the purchase for a full refund.

It’s totally understandable why the exchanges can’t take returns after you’ve already view the gift card for fraud prevention. But all exchanges should allow for cancelling while the order is still pending as this removes any doubts about whether the cards will come instantly or in time for your purchase. This is in the best interest of the buyer and in the best interest of the exchanges since it’ll spur additional sales.

Another option (not as good) would be to give a time estimate during the purchase. For example, as the website spins it could shoot out a message, “this purchase needs manual review which may take a few hours, do you still want to make the purchase?” At least we can be informed consumers under such a system. The current guessing game isn’t fun.