One4All Gift Cards

Stuart_W

I had not quite realised how irritating these are.

The One4All gift card is a multi-retailer gift card valid in various high street shops and online. Quite heavily promoted at post offices everywhere, but also available in supermarkets etc.

Now I understand that gift cards have an expiry date - usually 12 or 24 months after purchase, or in some cases 12 or 24 months since last usage.

And I also appreciate  it's an easy and convenient way to buy a gift card locally that isn't store-specific and can seem as more of a "gift" than cash can be.

But this card is really irritating.

The small irritation - the One4All card is actually processed as a weird type of Visa prepaid card (in that it is only valid in a select number of stores). This means when using online the voucher has to cover the whole order, you can't usually use One4All gift card plus pay the rest, as you enter the One4All card as a visa payment card, not a gift voucher. It also means when using in store, it generally produces a slip to sign as it goes though as a swipe-and-sign Visa transaction (the card has no chip) and the gift card has no name or signature on it, which has been known to confuse some till staff and led to protracted discussions with supervisors and even a phone call to head office in one instance.

The big irritation - as a prepaid visa it has an expiry date shown on the front of the card. Now it would of course be perfectly reasonable, when one has received a gift card with an expiry date on it that the balance on the gift card is valid until the expiry date.
Oh, no. Not with this card. 18 months after the gift card is purchased a 90p/month fee is deducted from the card. I have a card with an expiry date of 07/24 but it started charging the 90p from last month. I only discovered this by luck after checking my balance to see if a refund had been paid back to the card.

It doesn't state this fee or expiry on the back of the card - all other store gift cards I know of refer to expiry conditions on the card. Not with this shambles. 

Luckily I found the swap.one4all.com  website and swapped my remaining balance into a proper john lewis voucher so no more 90p fees could be taken!

Anyone else been caught out with one of these? A gift card with an expiry date printed on the front should be valid for the full amount it was purchased until that expiry date in my opinion.  

 

sheilavw

hi got £220 worth in February for my 60th, a £100 and a £120. there was £1.20 left one one. I made a purchase in M and S , she swiped through last £1.20 on one, remainder on one that had nearly £100 left on. A couple of weeks after I logged on to check balance and the £1.20 still shows as being available?

That sounds like a plan if you are losing. Maybe I will do the same

garfield33

Agree these are really annoying
- the 90p admin charge (for doing what exactly?) that they take each month after 18 months (this is in the T&Cs but well hidden)
- can't use them as part payment towards something online, so you can end up with a few random pounds and pence leftover
- spending in physical shops/restaurants is more do-able but faffy
- my employer gave all employees £25 as a thank you for working through covid, however navigating the website to activate it was a pain, and to spend in shops it says you have to add it to the app and then to your digital wallet, but the app never seems to work either...
- it says you can convert the digital one to an egift for certain retailers but the list of those is really short.

Basically, if you're thinking of getting these as a gift for someone - don't!
Have a look at trust pilot for lots of annoyed people who've lost money