One4All Prepaid visa giftcard overly restrictive

[Deleted User]

crumpet_man said:

More often than not, when they don't work in store it's because the sales assistant has tried to put it through as a gift card instead of a normal debit/credit card transaction. 

Argos and Currys online accept them and I have purchased Xbox, PSN and Steam gift cards without a problem.

Ah I should have made clear, this was an online purchase, using the normal credit card checker, it refused to transact 

WillPS

Deleted_User said:

WillPS said:

Deleted_User said:

Fingerbobs said:

jet01 said:

They are not Visa cards. Would be much easier to use them if that were the case. Operates on its own closed loop system. My former employer used to give us these cards for our Christmas bonus and they were always very difficult to use. I had to try three separate branches of Primark one year before chancing upon some one who knew how to ring the thing through the till. Been given Love2Shop vouchers in the past as well which is a similar kind of operation but they were much easier to use than All4one so really no excuse for being so bad. 

I have that problem with a lot of gift cards, even the single-shop branded ones - the staff simply don't know how to process them.

It's usually because they are run by a third party company and still processed externally like any other card. Even though they have the shop's branding on them.

That's not the case with single-store gift cards though, that's just retailers not providing adequate training.

It is the same with single-store gift cards. You know when you walk into TESCO or MORRISONS and they have that wall of gift cards for all different retailers and services, yeah? Well they are all supplied and processed by a single third party company on behalf of the companies advertised on the cards. Therefore when they are used they will go through the third party servers, not just internally at the shop it's for. 

Tosh. The cards might be placed there by a third party company, true enough, and that third party company or another might be the company who do the activation, but once they are activated the funds and cards live on separate systems - some retailers will manage these in house, others will use a SaaS solution, either way their tills will have a separate method of processing them (unlike One4All, Restaurant Gift Card etc which are processed as Visa/Mastercard).

There is no one company who holds all the funds and does all the transactions; a Nando's giftcard and its balance is the responsibility of Nando's once it has been activated, whereas a B&Q Gift Card is the responsibility of B&Q.

crumpet_man

Deleted_User said:

crumpet_man said:

More often than not, when they don't work in store it's because the sales assistant has tried to put it through as a gift card instead of a normal debit/credit card transaction. 

Argos and Currys online accept them and I have purchased Xbox, PSN and Steam gift cards without a problem.

Ah I should have made clear, this was an online purchase, using the normal credit card checker, it refused to transact 

Which retailer was it?  I'm just curious as to if it's one I have used with one4all

[Deleted User]

WillPS said:

Deleted_User said:

WillPS said:

Deleted_User said:

Fingerbobs said:

jet01 said:

They are not Visa cards. Would be much easier to use them if that were the case. Operates on its own closed loop system. My former employer used to give us these cards for our Christmas bonus and they were always very difficult to use. I had to try three separate branches of Primark one year before chancing upon some one who knew how to ring the thing through the till. Been given Love2Shop vouchers in the past as well which is a similar kind of operation but they were much easier to use than All4one so really no excuse for being so bad. 

I have that problem with a lot of gift cards, even the single-shop branded ones - the staff simply don't know how to process them.

It's usually because they are run by a third party company and still processed externally like any other card. Even though they have the shop's branding on them.

That's not the case with single-store gift cards though, that's just retailers not providing adequate training.

It is the same with single-store gift cards. You know when you walk into TESCO or MORRISONS and they have that wall of gift cards for all different retailers and services, yeah? Well they are all supplied and processed by a single third party company on behalf of the companies advertised on the cards. Therefore when they are used they will go through the third party servers, not just internally at the shop it's for. 

Tosh. The cards might be placed there by a third party company, true enough, and that third party company or another might be the company who do the activation, but once they are activated the funds and cards live on separate systems - some retailers will manage these in house, others will use a SaaS solution, either way their tills will have a separate method of processing them (unlike One4All, Restaurant Gift Card etc which are processed as Visa/Mastercard).

There is no one company who holds all the funds and does all the transactions; a Nando's giftcard and its balance is the responsibility of Nando's once it has been activated, whereas a B&Q Gift Card is the responsibility of B&Q.

Tosh. I've worked in retail and with many EPOS systems. If a card doesn't work then it's not going to work, it rarely has anything to do with the sales assistant not knowing how to process it. Usually they just get swiped the same way as debit cards did back in the day, depending on the EPOS system, you may or may not have to press a gift card button first. If it has Visa/Mastercard on it then it would get processed like any Visa/Mastercard would.

1000_trees

Fingerbobs said:

1000_trees said:

The T&C's do not state anything of that nature. Kindly refrain from posting false information on the internet. 

Blimey, why the attitude? 

I made a mistake - I was thinking of Love2Shop gift vouchers, which definitely do state that they cannot be used to purchase retailer's own gift vouchers (it's actually printed on the vouchers). I apologise for the confusion, and have deleted my incorrect post. 

It was an honest mistake, and I don't see the need for the aggressive response. 

There's no attitude in my reply. I was simply correcting your misleading post. Someone had to. 
My reply is not aggressive in the slightest. 
Thank you for your apology and for recognising your mistake. 

WillPS

Deleted_User said:

WillPS said:

Deleted_User said:

WillPS said:

Deleted_User said:

Fingerbobs said:

jet01 said:

They are not Visa cards. Would be much easier to use them if that were the case. Operates on its own closed loop system. My former employer used to give us these cards for our Christmas bonus and they were always very difficult to use. I had to try three separate branches of Primark one year before chancing upon some one who knew how to ring the thing through the till. Been given Love2Shop vouchers in the past as well which is a similar kind of operation but they were much easier to use than All4one so really no excuse for being so bad. 

I have that problem with a lot of gift cards, even the single-shop branded ones - the staff simply don't know how to process them.

It's usually because they are run by a third party company and still processed externally like any other card. Even though they have the shop's branding on them.

That's not the case with single-store gift cards though, that's just retailers not providing adequate training.

It is the same with single-store gift cards. You know when you walk into TESCO or MORRISONS and they have that wall of gift cards for all different retailers and services, yeah? Well they are all supplied and processed by a single third party company on behalf of the companies advertised on the cards. Therefore when they are used they will go through the third party servers, not just internally at the shop it's for. 

Tosh. The cards might be placed there by a third party company, true enough, and that third party company or another might be the company who do the activation, but once they are activated the funds and cards live on separate systems - some retailers will manage these in house, others will use a SaaS solution, either way their tills will have a separate method of processing them (unlike One4All, Restaurant Gift Card etc which are processed as Visa/Mastercard).

There is no one company who holds all the funds and does all the transactions; a Nando's giftcard and its balance is the responsibility of Nando's once it has been activated, whereas a B&Q Gift Card is the responsibility of B&Q.

Tosh. I've worked in retail and with many EPOS systems. If a card doesn't work then it's not going to work, it rarely has anything to do with the sales assistant not knowing how to process it. Usually they just get swiped the same way as debit cards did back in the day, depending on the EPOS system, you may or may not have to press a gift card button first. If it has Visa/Mastercard on it then it would get processed like any Visa/Mastercard would.

If you've worked in retail, then you will know acutely that the manner in which first party gift cards are processed fundamentally differs from the way a debit, credit or prepaid Visa/Mastercard is processed then - for one, you'll be aware that a first party gift card will typically reveal its balance before allowing the employee (or customer in the case of a self service checkout) to select how much of that balance they would like to use - this being the key difference which makes them much easier to use as they will not just decline if the customer tries to use them on a transaction with a higher value than the balance on the card. In that case the EPOS system would simply use the full value of the gift card and allow another tender to be taken, unlike with a prepaid Visa/Mastercard, which would decline unless the customer knew the exact amount on the card to be taken (and the employee knew how to charge only that amount to the card).

The method that the card is read at the point of sale or purchase is neither here nor there; Nectar can also be swiped, you're not going to tell me Nectar spend is processed like a Mastercard/Visa, are you? It does serve as further evidence that they patently aren't all the same tho, for example at Tesco or Morrisons one can purchase a gift card for Nando's (which is swiped at the point of sale), M&S (which has a barcode to be scanned when used in store) and Amazon (which has a machine readable alphanumeric PIN). They are all just means of reading a unique identifier which the EPOS system then looks up, either against an in-house database or a SaaS product.

[Deleted User]

crumpet_man said:

Deleted_User said:

crumpet_man said:

More often than not, when they don't work in store it's because the sales assistant has tried to put it through as a gift card instead of a normal debit/credit card transaction. 

Argos and Currys online accept them and I have purchased Xbox, PSN and Steam gift cards without a problem.

Ah I should have made clear, this was an online purchase, using the normal credit card checker, it refused to transact 

Which retailer was it?  I'm just curious as to if it's one I have used with one4all

Some beer company. I only wonder now, maybe I made a mistake on the balance and thought it was more than I had, but I was pretty sure I got it right. They're now charging me 90p a month as the card is 18 months old, I am going to Halfords today to buy something on it before the next charge on Friday as they've already had £2.70 off it!