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The other day my wife tried to use a Winners gift card which she has used before and the cashier gave her a number to call as the card did not work. Today I called and the lady said card is under police investigation and said I can report to the police. Then I went to HD and the GC I had showed zero balance. Might be some crime ring out there scamming people?
Anyone experience this?
Did she buy it used from someone? Or from the store.
Either way chances are someone grabbed a stack of gift cards, scratched off the code on the back to capture the pin and the card number, then put them back on the shelf. Then someone buys it and loads it up .... the thief then does a balance transfer to a new card in their possession.
It's a very common scam unfortunately. It's also common on kijiji too. You can buy the sticky/scratch shit from sites too so someone can even get a 500$ gift card, scratch it off, record everything, cover the code back up to make it look semi-legit and then resell it for 80% value. As you drive out of the parking lot they're in their car moving the balance.
Wow, that's useful info. Thanks for the heads up!Quote:
Originally Posted by pheoxs
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to pheoxs again.
I was always under the impression that you should meet at vendor location to have the GC balance transferred to a new GC.
But based on what pheoxs said, you never know if the new GC has been tampered with? Crazy.
yeah, easy to get scammed with GC's, if you're buying them used, always meet at the store, verify the balance, and then have it moved to a new card with the pin code covered...
and never buy a card from a store with the barcode and pin exposed
happened all the time before at shoppers drugmart, they'd have GC deals like canadian tire, people would load up and then the scammers would clean it out with online purchases... now they changed the GC packaging so it cant be done so they know its happening.
Yeah for a few years we had no issue meeting at the vendor to verify balance and look for the covered pin. Most recently I got one for Costco and seller was sketchy so I asked Costco to transfer the amount to a new card. Online research today saw what P mentioned above. First time we run into this. Same week. Both cards have been used once before by us!
Yes, this is the safest way to do it. ALWAYS transfer the balance to a brand new gift card at the store if you are buying used.Quote:
Originally Posted by rx7boi
Although if they said the card is under investigation then I'd wager the thief hit a whole stack of cards at the store so they were able to pull all the ones sold and report them all.
also entirely possible that the cashier made note of the pin, just hit reprint on your receipt to get the number, and used it for herself, knowing she could manually enter the numbers.
Yeah, I was reading not too long ago what scammers are doing now is scratch off the gift card stickers located throughout the store, scan the barcodes, then reapply a new scratch sticker and wait until just before Christmas to drain the cards cause most cards are bought between Black Friday and Christmas and nobody checks the card until they receive them as gifts at the earliest.
I was kinda impressed at how clever that was.
TIL... buying gift cards with stolen credit card and resell on Kijiji isn't the only scam on GCs.
So if crooks manage to scan these GCs, put the sticker back on them, and then wait for an unsuspecting buyer to buy these GC's, how do they know when the GC is active?
Are they running a daily script to see if the GC # is working for purchases?
just gotta check the online balance checker, i am sure it'd be easy enough to set up some sort of automated script that reports when it shows a successful check\Quote:
Originally Posted by rx7boi
Yeah, it wouldn't take long to set up an automated script to check balances in batches at all. Even if they didn't, it's not like they'd have full time jobs keeping them busy :rofl:Quote:
Originally Posted by rx7boi