I wanted to quickly flag two things – only vaguely connected – about retail gift cards.
Firstly, before Christmas American Express ran a promotion which offered a 20% discount on HMV gift cards. Reader Tim got in touch to say that he had bought some of these and had not yet redeemed them. He called Amex, and Amex has agreed to refund the money under their voluntary chargeback scheme. (It is ‘voluntary’ because Amex Plat and Gold cards are NOT credit cards and so Amex is not legally bound under ‘Section 75′ law to give you your money when a company goes bust.)
Note that you need to file a claim with Amex within 120 days of the retailer going into administration.
The second is just a reminder that Tesco is STILL giving 150 bonus Clubcard points when you spend £50 of gift cards instore (Tesco and Visa gift cards excluded). Full details are in this post. Saturday 26th January is, I think, the last day to collect Clubcard points if you want to receive the points in the February mailing.
If you collect Virgin miles and want to take advantage of the 50% bonus on transfers of Clubcard points to Virgin, this is especially interesting. 150 Clubcard points = 375 Virgin miles, so 562 Virgin Flying Club miles with the bonus. The Clubcard points go onto your account immediately, so you would definitely get them in February.
Ooh that’s good news – I too have some unused HMV e-codes bought during the Amex promotion from the external provider SMV. The night when the news came out, I desperately tried putting in some final orders on HMV.com which since have appeared to be ‘cancelled’.- hopefully I can get claimback something from Amex!
It’s largely irrelevant now, but how did you get them as e-codes? When I was looking at this offer, with an eye to using them for an iPad there only seemed to postal vouchers/cards, which understandably put me off!
I’ve called Amex twice as I’m in the same boat (although I bought them ob my BA Amex so should be covered under section 75). They say their lawyers are talking to HMV’s lawyers and they will be in touch at some point in the future to let me know what is happening.
Inconsistent responses from Amex.
Me too. I bought £480 in vouchers from amex.
I spoke to Amex this morning and they say they are looking into it and cannot promise anything, they say it is at best 50:50 if I will get my money back. They also say section 75 does not apply to vouchers!
We need to get together on this to make sure we get our money back.
I have started a thread on MSE to discuss this particular issue. I think it would be beneficial if we worked together on this as we are all in a similar boat:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/newthread.php?do=postthread&f=11
incorrect url sorry, should be: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=4396877
I would argue that Amex has a moral right to refund you, given that this was a special Amex promotion they emailed to you
Yeah, I’d be surprised if Amex didn’t refund these. Customer service is one of their strengths and I doubt they would want to lose loyal customers over this. If it was another credit card company, say CapitalOne or MBNA, I would be more worried than I am with Amex.
My OH bought enough vouchers for an iPad and redeemed them online. The delivery was due to take 4 weeks and halfway through, boom hits the administration statement. HMV still say they’re waiting for stock, but we’ve got a finger on the trigger to Amex if nothing moves in this next 2 weeks
Raffles may have slightly overstated my case. I bought £530 worth of HMV vouchers with the intention of buying the top-spec iPad Mini. HMV never had stock – Apple was apparently unwilling to supply HMV. Amex have a voluntary chargeback scheme which covers liquidations of suppliers. I have made a claim and await a formal response. The complication is, as FanOfPoints indicates, the supplier of the vouchers was a 3rd party which has not gone bust. It makes you wonder what the exact role of the 3rd party, SVM Europe Ltd, was in all of this.
Tim, what exactly did you do to make your claim? Did you get any kind of inclination as to whether you would be successful in your claim or not?
is the 150 point bonus limited to one time only?
No, available as often as you want. I think I’ve done 5 lots so far. And if buy £100 in one transaction, you get 2 bonuses.
(One condition – if you buy £100, £150 etc in one transaction, it must be possible to divide up the cards you have bought into £50 multiples. For example, if you bought 5 x £20 cards together, you would only get ONE bonus – because you cannot make 2 lots of £50 out of those quantities. However, if you bought 4 x £20 and 2 x £10 in one transaction, you would get TWO bonuses.)
Are you sure of this? I’ve made use of this many times now and never thought in this way. But I certainly got the bonus each time, and it’s hard to think they coincidentally added up this way.
I base this comment on one instance on Flyertalk where someone bought 5 x £20 and they only got one bonus. It does make some sort of logical sense, though.
That’s good news as I need £300 of Next Gift cards and I was thinking I would need to do six separate £50 purchases to get the 900 points, which would have been a pain.
I have bought £1200 worth of giftcards over the last 3 months and it has not mattered on the combination as long as it met the £50 purchase requirment to get the 150 point bonus. I bought £800 of comet vouchers and luckily bought my laptop before they went into administration and all the clubcard points were added at the till in one go.
However, I will point out that sometimes the giftcards all scan through and when it is time to pay the cashier notices that a few didn’t work, which is a pain as you have to sort through them to find the ones that didn’t work and either rescan or find some new cards on the shelf.
Before I received an answer to my claim, Deloite have announced that they will now honour them.
“Further to your email, I write to confirm that after an assessment of the Company’s financial position, HMV gift vouchers and gift cards will be honoured at HMV stores across the UK to the extent that they are within the relevant expiry period. Please note that this relates to gift vouchers and gift cards that can be used in HMV only.”
I wonder if they will have stock of iPad Minis?