Has anyone ever had a gift card balance stolen?
 

Earlier this afternoon I stopped by Cabelas to pick up some ammo with some gift cards that I had accumulated from Christmas' past. When I went to check out I gave the lady a gift card that was supposed to be 100 bucks.

It's been sitting in my wallet since I got it for Christmas two years ago.

The lady swiped it several times and each time the balance of the card read $0. The pin # hadn't even been scratched off yet. I tried it again at customer service to no avail.

I know for a fact I never used the thing. What happened to my $100? How the hell would someone even drain this thing without my knowledge?

:#:#:#

Expiration date?

Nope, the Cabelas cards don't expire and I used one that was a year older that had $11 on it.

Customer service said normally they can track them to when it was used but since it was a "pre-merger" gift card they didn't have any info on it.

Yeah. But I get gift cards through a processor. They helped me out. Not sure how it would work if you got it directly from the business though.

I think the govt made this illegal or it has to be an extremely long time.

The person who bought the gift card for you got scammed

Does it have Cabela's logo on the card?

Yeah it did. I probably should have kept it and called the customer service # on the card but I was kinda pissed off so I tossed it in the trash when I walked out

My bro said he got the card from Cabelas and had it loaded with $100 at the store in KC. Now there's no way to prove this since it was 2.5 years ago. I'm just curious how it happened

I've got some Cabela's gift cards from 15 years ago, still good. They don't expire.

I used to get a magazine and tell them I got them a years long sub for people I had to get gifts for but didn't like but never actually did. They got just that one magazine.

Looking back on it. Shoulda got them some empty gift cards. Damn.

No but this thread reminded me I have a $50 gift card in my glove box I've been meaning to use on gas.

So, thanks. PBJ

Heh

I don't think my bro pulled a fast one on us, as he also gave my wife and I a $300 NFM card for Christmas that year too

Enjoy that half tank

I heard a life hack where if you buy a gift card for someone write down the number and check it after a year or two, if it still has the full balance then they likely forgot about it so go ahead and use it for yourself.

That sounds like bullshit. Don't know about cabelas but a lot of store gift cards you can check online yourself and see when the balance was loaded and any transactions. I have a hard time believing they themselves couldn't track any information about it despite a merger.

I've done that with Amazon gift cards.

Well at first I thought it was odd too, but I had two people tell me the same thing so I don't know? Pretty lame regardless.

Most likely explanation is the employee who sold it did it.

No, the most likely explanation is he used it and forgot.

Well, he's sure he didn't. So the next most likely explanation is the cashier had a nice present for themselves.

Sure haven’t. I’m not a pussy.

OP, do you box?!

/staylor

I'd get that if say, it had $3.50 or something left on it or the grey shit that protects the pin number was scratched off.

But I can't remember the last time I made a purchase at Cabelas that was over $100 and originally I was saving this card to put towards the purchase of a gunsafe.

I was just interested in how this card could have gotten scammed. Oh well, the world may never know.

Sounds like the employee didn't load the card correctly when it was purchased.

I've had that happen to me, the employee ringing up the card was having a hard time with it and finally gave me the card.

Well they did it wrong and i gifted a person a card with zero balance on it so I felt like a fool when the person told me that. Now i always keep the receipt and hand both the receipt and card with it.

More importantly I buy the card with a manager or assistant manager not some zit faced 18 year old kid who has only worked there a few days.