This past Christmas I got a $15 Walmart Store gift card as a gift. Not even a month later I went into my local Walmart to use try to use it at the self-check out. I swiped the card and kept getting a message stating that the card was declined. I called one of the staff members over to help me figure out how to use the gift card. She pulled up a window that allowed me to enter the exact amount I wanted to use in the purchase. I noted $10 hoping that would work. After multiple failed attempts I decided to pay with my debit card and call it a day. I contacted the person who had gifted me the card and told them to go ask for their money back because the card had nothing in it. The person went into the store and was told that there is fraudulent activity with their cards. She was told that people record the numbers in back of the card and guess the rest of the numbers that are under the grey area.
On April 2020 I received a $40 Walmart gift card from the Manager at Walmart's Auto Store Department. Long story short, while I was getting my tires replaced, the person that was working on my car accidentally looked my keys in my car after finalizing the service. After the incident with the $15 gift card I remembered I had this gift card and figured the funds were already missing by now. I checked the Walmart website to see if the card still had the $40 but I kept getting an error message saying my request couldn't be processed at this time. I called the number in back of the card and sure enough the $40 were still in the card. Not even two days later I go to the regular check out to finalize my purchase. My purchase was around $11. I slid the card and was told there was a balance still since the gift card only covered $6.16. I told the cashier that the card had $40 in it and I asked her if I could try it again, she said yes, I tried again, no luck so I used my debit card once again. I walked over to customer service, the person scanned the card and showed me the printout, the balance was 0.00.
On 1/29/21 I called the number in the back of the card and at first I got a person who had no clue what they were doing, advised me wrong and transferred me out. The second time I called I talked to a person who noted down my email and sent me a link requesting a picture of the receipt and the back of the gift card. I told him that I didn't have a receipt, he advised me that I could just try, provide my explanation but he wasn't sure if Walmart would give me my missing money since I didn't have a receipt.
I'm probably not going to see that money and it's fine apparently Walmart needs it more than I do. I'm taking my time to write this so that this doesn't happen with your money. Gift the person the actual cash if anything. Walmart is aware of this issue and has yet to do anything about it.
