Dundas family warns against 3rd-party retailers after losing $300 on empty gift card

A Dundas family is advising anyone in the market for a gift card should stay away from third-party retailers. They say they lost $300 in a recent purchase at a local Shoppers Drug Mart and the family hasn’t been reimbursed and want answers.

A perplexed Diskin family say they feel swindled and are owed a refund, following the purchase of an empty $300 Apple gift card.

“I went to buy a gift card and before I couldn’t even get home, I think it was three minutes, the funds were gone,” said Lainey Diskin.

Diskin says it was Sunday afternoon when she went to a Dundas Shoppers Drug Mart, where she bought the card that could hold up to $500. She says when she attempted to use it online the same day, that is when she discovered there wasn’t any money on it.

“I tried to access them but I was told they were already redeemed,” she said.

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Her father Lawrence says Apple customer service wouldn’t reimburse the loss. In turn, the family says they approached shoppers management for more answers, who told them to inquire with the tech giant.

“They said ‘we’re sorry, it’s out of our hands, our policy says we can’t refund the money’ I said ‘you can’t refund $300? you’re a multi-billion dollar corporation,” said Lawrence.

According to emails obtained by CHCH News — Shoppers Drug Mart says they’ve investigated. It says its gift card partner confirmed the redeemed card but couldn’t retrieve the funds.

“I asked the manager here, you know you have a serious security issue,” said Lawrence. “You shouldn’t have these gift cards out in the open like this.”

According to one retail analyst, he says one way scammers use is they tend to copy the barcode found on a gift card they can get their hands on and that’s how they gain direct access to the funds.

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“They go to the store and literally paste them over the barcode on the gift card, and it’s so real, it’s so good it looks like it’s meant to be there,” said Retail Analyst, Bruce Winder.

Winder says empty gift cards right after purchase at retailers became a common occurrence starting last year. He says its unclear who is legally responsible.

“One could argue that if Shoppers Drug mart had more security, they would be able to stop the thieves from copying and pasting barcodes, they could catch them, that’s where the point of failure is, the retail level,” he said.

The family says they’ll be thinking twice about their next gift card.

“I would say don’t buy them [gift cards] from anywhere, where they’re out in the open,” said Lawrence.

Shoppers gift card partner Blackhawk Network says they are currently looking into the incident and say if they find probable fraud they will work on reimbursing the Diskins.

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