Spend Anywhere pre-paid gift card. Nightmare from start to finish!

TylersMummy

Hi there all, really hoping for a little help/advice/similar experiences and to be honest, a bit of a rant.

On my birthday of April of this year, for my present, my mum gave me a £25 Maestro Spend Anywhere gift card. I was really happy and intrigued, as I'd never come across something like it before. My husband is a manager for the Co-operative and said they sell something very similar from their Gift Card section and said you can spend them anywhere that accepts Maestro. My mum said she'd bought it from Boots and she just had to pay a £2.95 charge to activate it at the till. Was really chuffed!

I knew I'd be going up to Oxford Street this month so I registered my voucher online like it said to on the packaging (myspendanywhere.co.uk) and put it away for safe keeping ready for my shopping trip. In the mean time, my brother and nan's birthdays came and went, and my mum did the same, and bought them each a £25 Spend Anywhere gift card, but Visa versions.

Anyway! (Sorry if I'm rambling, I'm a writer, it's in my blood! :rotfl:) A few weeks ago, the night before my shopping trip, I signed online to the My Spend Anywhere account, just to check all was still valid and it said I had £25 on my card, "ready to spend anywhere that accepts Maestro!". So off I trotted the following day, filled my basket in New Look and went to the till. Before the cashier had scanned everything, I showed her my gift card and she said "Hmm, not seen it before but it says Maestro so I'm sure it'll be fine". She was nice enough. My clobber came to £48. She fiddled with the card, scanning it, reading it, putting it through the till and she said it just kept saying declined. I handed over the packaging and said it is a pre-paid card and said it's valid anywhere. She went to get the manager who to be honest, was so defensive and unhelpful from the off and that "if the computer said no, it said no" and he could void my items or I would have to pay with another card or cash. I was standing there, holding up a mammoth queue, I was so embarrassed. So I paid on my debit card, left, went straight to a cafe, called the number on the gift card (£1 a min and couldn't find an alternative on 'Say no...') and spoke to a rep quite quickly. He said "I tell you what's happened, the clerk has tried to put £48 through on the card and it's been declined because obviously there's on £25 on it, so the card is saying there's not enough on there. The cashier should have taken £23 by another means, and then the remaindering £25 on the gift card as I can see you have £25 on your account". He said "this happens all the time!". I said okay and hung up.

Anyway, my mum was with me. She was so annoyed and said she felt responsible as it was her gift. So off we went to Mothercare to get DS some clothes. We tried with the gift card again. The friendly clerk was very confused and we stood there for ages as she ummed and ahhed and ALMOST said "no sorry" until a manager came over, shrugged a bit and put it through a few times. Eventually "they thought" it worked and we successfully purchased something on it, leaving £10 on there! To cut a very boring, long story short, I tried to spend that £10 at Primark on another occasion and at Asda today (both amounts *lower* than £10 so the first problem couldn't happen again) and both ended up calling over a herd of staff and couldn't work it out. I left AGAIN with having to pay cash and again, red faced, standing there as they said "have you ever used this before? Do you know how Mothercare did this because we're just getting a 'declined' message". SIGH!

Anyway, my mum tells me today that she hasn't been able to spend hers when she went to get food shopping with it in Asda and my poor nan, who is 80, went to spend hers in Sainsburys 200 miles from me, on a jumper for £23, and got told they were having trouble with it and "didn't accept it". We had even called my nan and said just to save on bother, you may want to purchase something less than £25. But to be honest, even that is ridiculous, because a "gift" shouldn't cause so much agro!
The Sainsburys staff were very nice and actually went to the customer service kiosk and called the Spend Anywhere company who then wanted to speak to my nan to verify her name, address, date of birth, purchase, and asked for her permission to speak to the Sainsburys staff. My nan called me very flustered saying it had taken 30 minutes just to buy a jumper. I felt so sorry for her! My brother has yet to spend his because frankly, he's dreading getting it out and handing it to the shop!

I've come home from another shopping trip seething, knowing my Mum purchased these from Boots and Tesco for gifts, paid almost £3 for the privilege and ALL times bar one (and even that I wouldn't call flawless or pleasant!), we've been turned away and told that the term "Spend Anywhere" is more like Spend Nowhere!
I came home, opened my laptop and hopped onto Spend Anywhere's website to try and find an email or postal address so I can start the complaints process, but they have nothing on there that I can see other than a phone number which is £1 a minute and apparently I have to call that to get the details on how to complain!
I may be being a little blind, but I have searched for an email address and can't find anything other than the horrendous phone number.

I am so angry that that has cost us so much time/money/embarrassment at the till, and now to pay £1 a minute to get an address is making me exceptionally annoyed.

Would I 100% take this up with Spend Anywhere or would it be the shops? Or Maestro/Visa? I honestly need to get my complaint across but don't really know where to start. I will likely just bite the bullet and ring that horrible phone number tomorrow but I will put the complaint in writing, as a 'sorry' really isn't going to cut this for me, personally. My mum has bought four of these, one from Boots, three from Tesco, and on all separate occasions, only one purchase has been successful and we have visited huge, chain stores, such as Asda, Tesco, New Look, Primark and Sainsburys. It's not like we've taken them to a tiny one-man-band boutique or something.

Has anyone else had any experience or this and/or have any advice?

:beer: <<< a beer if you got through ALL of that! :rotfl: :T

custardy

Would I 100% take this up with Spend Anywhere or would it be the shops?

Well if the shops payment services won't accept it,theres little they can do at point of sale.
I would think Spend Anywhere are the ones to approach.perhaps they have a list of stores the 100% take them

Fosterdog

One of the problems with these cards is that the shops try to take the payment as a gift card which won't work, they have to process it as a normal card sale. At least that seemed to be the problem when I was given one as a gift.

SuperHan

I expect it's a Spend Anywhere issue, as the tills taking payment should just see it as a Maestro, and there's no reason these tills can't take the payment in the usual way.

The problem is occurring when authorising the transaction, so in the communication between shop and Spend Anywhere. Assuming all other Maestro transactions have been going through fine, the problem must lie with Spend Anywhere.

But this looks like another pro for good old cash.


Or, as Fosterdog says, it's a training issue with the cashiers... But that should be made clear on Spend Anywhere's packaging to avoid the problem...

Tina20

Sounds like it's a relatively new idea and not a lot of retailers will know about it, even if they can take it (if they have the know-how)

I'm not a gift card person anyway, what on earth is wrong with plain old £25? EVERYWHERE takes good old pound notes. None of the hassle.

Everybody wins

Forwandert

Fosterdog wrote: »

One of the problems with these cards is that the shops try to take the payment as a gift card which won't work, they have to process it as a normal card sale. At least that seemed to be the problem when I was given one as a gift.

This will be the problem.

I also wouldn't class it as a lack of training on the part of the stores either if the company hasn't made retail companies aware they are trading in these cards. You basically have a pre paid money card just worded differently. Every time you mention to the person instore you have a giftcard they will try and process it as a giftcard so mentioning 'gift card' will be causing problems. If you are trying to pay for more items then the card is worth this will also cause it to be declined unless you mention you wish to pay x amount on the card before they complete the sale or pay the difference first depnding on the till system. Some till systems work in different ways ie.

Cash payment of x amount then debit/credit card transaction after or the system automatically tries to take the full amount on the initial total amount. Some systems don't allow you to select x amount by debit card so they work around is to do the cash first. Others work the other way card payment first then cash, this is the better system as it means if someones paid half cash and the debit cards gets declined your stuck with half a transaction on the till. This way you haven't taken any payment and it's easier to void.

So bascially don't mention giftcard and it should solve most of the problems as they won't have a clue what card you are paying with so they will do a normal transaction which you want.

marywooyeah

I think the fact you had to pay £2.95 to activate it would have rang alarm bells with me - OP you definetly need to raise it with the Spend Anywhere people, I know it sounds very stressful for your nan but at least the staff tried to help her and the staff can't let you take the goods without some form of payment.

Given that you're a writer you should draft a strongly worded but to the point email setting out all of the problems you experienced. good luck!

bris

So it cost £27.95 to get a £25 card that can't be used when you need it. Never give gift cards, pound notes are the best gift cards you can get.

TylersMummy

Thank you SO much for your posts everyone.

I definitely agree that the cashiers were likely putting it through as a gift card. I told the lady in Asda and in Primark they had to put it through as they would a credit or debit card as it is literally a pre-paid credit card. This seemed to make a little more sense to them but it was still declined in Asda and I asked for the receipt stating it so I could keep it.

I definitely will take it up with Spend Anywhere. The staff at all of the shops (bar the arsey manager at New Look!) were all helpful and lovely but just confused and as you guys say, it's a training issue!

My mum said she will definitely be sticking with cash from now on. I think it's because money has been tight with bills at the moment and she wanted me to treat myself 100% after having my baby and knew if it was cash it would disappear into the pot of bills and at the time, it was a lovely wise idea. Never again though that's for sure!

I'm going to have a hunt for an address as it's a product of 'the Blackhawk Network' so I'll go through them as opposed to contacting them via the £1 a min number.

bbfc

I work as a Manager in a large high street retailer and we are seeing more and more of these being used. The problem is, as outlined in the first post, that is the total value of the transaction is more than the card value, it will decline the card. On our tills (and most other tills) we can enter a specific amount to charge the card and that works all the time. I very much doubt they will be putting it through as a gift card, as it is not one of those.

themull1

Why would anyone pay £2.95 for a £25.00 gift card anyway? there's loads of gift cards that you can get free, or money obviously.!