This past Tuesday, I spent close to two and a half hours with a most helpful person at our local Giant’s customer service, who was trying to help me get a refund for the $500 I had spent a few days earlier on five $100 Amazon gift cards. One of the gift card recipients had opened his Christmas gift early and noticed that the claim code had been cut out of the GC. I couldn’t believe how something like that could happen, as I was sure the card was in its sleeve when I bought it. I decided to call the parents of the recipients of the other four cards and asked them to have their children open their Christmas gift early to check. Shockingly, all four cards also had their claim code cut out! That night, in total disbelief and confused as to who to call next, I decided to call Amazon. After almost one hour talking with them and sending them photos of all five cards, I was told to go to Giant and bring up the issue with them.

The next morning I spent another hour with Visa’s various fraud departments, but they, too, advised me to direct my concern to Giant. When I went to the store I decided to pick up another $100 Amazon card from the stand and asked the customer service employee to check it out, just in case it was tampered with. Sure enough, that and subsequent cards he opened all had the claim code cut out! How that was possible is a mystery, but the person who helped me eventually get my refund, after long waits on the phone with the fraud department, asked one of his employees to remove all Amazon cards from the stand, just to be on the safe side !

I want to just say how thankful I was to José, who with so much patience and kindness on such a busy day, spent so much time to help me with this issue. I couldn’t have been more thankful. This incidence was unbelievable, and I dread to know how many people opened their gift cards this holiday, whether Amazon or any other that had a scammer steal the code, only to find that their value was useless! I was very lucky to be able to send my grandchildren their gift in form of a direct money transfer to their parents.

Thank you José at Giant, you saved this very important day. Happy Holiday!

Farida
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Editor's note: What a story! The nominations are all in for the 2024 Listsies, and voting is underway -- so this post will be have to go into the pool of contenders for a Cleveland Park Listy in December, 2025. Still time to get your ballot in -- vote by reply to https://groups.io/g/clevelandpark/message/220853 -- by noon on Saturday, December 28, 2024.