Gift cards and chargebacks

GreyCellGreen

Just to expand, the Gift card was purchased not through an employer site but a 3rd party site that resells the cards. I have bought Amazon, Currys and John Lewis cards through them before and never had an issue with the cards validity and goods have always been supplied. If you are not familiar with Currys they regularly cancel orders and give you no explanation as to the reason why, in some cases you don't even get an email to confirm the order has been cancelled. The call centre is now in South Africa and although they are generally "helpful", if you can get through to them" it is impossible to get a definitive answer from them as they just take the info to then pass on to a "back office" (and the same if you use the webchat) and this is where the process falls down as you rarely get a follow up. In total I placed 7 orders using the same gift card and one of the orders was split between a gift and credit card. 4 of the orders were supplied without issue and 3 orders cancelled. 1 of the orders has been refunded in full back to the original gift card, the order split between gift and credit card has had the gift card element refunded but not the credit card and the other order has had no refund issued as yet (which is the initial reason why I started the thread).

I know if the credit card element doesn't get refunded I can do a chargeback via Barclaycard and I guess from the balance of the answers I was correct in thinking to recover the other order which was placed via a gift card I have to take them to the small claims court if they do not issue a refund back to the original gift card or supply me with a new one.
I suppose the lesson is as people have pointed out is to place an element of the order with a credit card and the balance on a gift card

Thanks for all the comments

born_again

Heidiho said:

Thank you op, I’m in a similar spot with Ticketmaster after the gig I bought tickets for was cancelled. The refund was meant to happen with 21 days (which ended today) but when I log onto my employer’s reward website it says the balance of the gift card that I paid with is still zero. I’ll be raising a complaint with ticketmaster tomorrow and will wait to see how they respond.

I think you will find that the refund will be as a TicketMaster voucher. 

Olenna

The moral of the story is don't get gift cards where the underlying retailer is problematic, potentially insolvent or where you cannot easily use them for another purchase. 

Supermarket (except Asda), John Lewis/Waitrose, Starbucks, Costa or Amazon all work for me. 

I've seen some sim deals on MSE but wouldn't opt for any that include Curry's vouchers as they're more hassle than their face value.