Mastercard gift cards are not Mastercard gift cards

[Jack7957]

Seems someone at a LA area Walmart figured out how to replace giftcards in their packages with other branded giftcards

(note: autoplay video at the link contains a very loud ad before the story, mute or lower your volume)

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/lo...238994801.html

[Mytical]

I feel sorry for the victims of this, but more so for the 'rank and file' of the Mart of Walls. They have to follow company protocol, and their hands are tied. Do SC's understand this? No. While I can not blame them for being angry, there is nothing the people at these stores can do. It is a lose/lose situation.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I feel sorry for the victims of this, but more so for the 'rank and file' of the Mart of Walls. They have to follow company protocol, and their hands are tied. Do SC's understand this? No. While I can not blame them for being angry, there is nothing the people at these stores can do. It is a lose/lose situation.

Exactly.

Besides, whatever happened to giving out cash that can be used ANYWHERE the recipient chooses?

Like my stepmom said this past Christmas when my brother complained about his cash, she can always exchange it for him - for something smaller.

[Kiwi]

My store would have just eaten the cost of the cards and gone written off the loss. What a crappy situation for both sides. The store manager should have yanked the cards until they knew they had a fresh batch.

[Dreamstalker]

How can they make sure the cards are 'fresh' without opening them? I agree that it had to be an inside job, a lot of card-tampering cases are.

Now I'm curious how someone got the package open and resealed...over the holidays I had to trash a few of these gift cards that were opened. Most of the MC/Visa/Amex card packaging we have has a tear-strip over the card barcode that needs to be removed (the only scannable barcode is the one on the card).

ETA: We have a few gift cards in the older packaging that does not have a tear-strip. Those look like they would be easy to steam open; removing the card and resealing is probably a snap once that's done. It would only work on cards that don't need the actual card barcode to be scanned though.