The gift card that just won't keep on giving

On her 21st birthday a PriceWatch reader's daughter was given gift cards from the Dundrum Town Centre valued at €300.

No doubt thrilled with the fairly substantial present, she immediately went shopping in Oasis where she bought items to the value of €121. Or at least she tried to. The shop assistant swiped one of the cards and the transaction appeared to go through, right up until the last second, when the whole transaction unexpectedly terminated. It was too late, however, to stop the money value being deducted from the card. Our reader's daughter was told by Oasis staff that this had happened with a number of the gift cards and was directed towards the courtesy desk where the matter would be rectified.

Or so she thought. Customer services staff denied it was a common problem and said it was the fault of Oasis. A member of the customer service department told her it would take between three and six working days for the money to be returned to the card.

Our reader goes on to say that at "no time did Dundrum Town Centre staff apologise or offer any solution to the problem". Her daughter went back the following day, but the money was still not on the card. Our reader accompanied her daughter back to the centre a day later where staff were, she says, "extremely unhelpful and it seemed to me they had done nothing about investigating the matter. Nobody had phoned her or contacted her," she says.

"We then went down to Oasis where the supervisor was very helpful and looked at their system and produced a record of where the transaction had terminated, which she signed."

Last Monday the birthday girl received a phone call from Dundrum Town Centre informing her that it would be at least 15 days before the money would be reinstated on her card and once more blamed the retail outlet where the original transaction had taken place.

We contacted the Dundrum Town Centre on her behalf and were told the centre regretted any inconvenience caused and would "facilitate the customer in question with a new gift card for the remaining balance". In a statement the management company said that the recently launched Dundrum Gift Card was operated by a company called HQGiftFlex in conjunction with Mastercard Maestro. The card works on the same principle as a debit card "and therefore is subject to the same banking conditions as that of any credit or debit card". We were told that as a result of a "merchant till error", the transaction went through what is called a "frozen authorisation".

"Unless released by the retailer via a settlement message to the Gift Card operator, the standard banking terms of 15 days will come into operation before the funds are reissued; this is a common occurrence with credit cards," the statement says.

We were told since we contacted them, HQGiftFlex had been in touch with the merchant to resolve the administration issue "and as a matter of course facilitates ongoing testing on the system". We were told that our reader's daughter has used her gift card with no problems since the reported incident. "Dundrum Town Centre, in accordance with its high customer service ethos, are disappointed with this customer's experience; they are reviewing the communications processes in place and if necessary will take whatever steps are needed to ensure this situation does not arise again," the statement concluded.

Raising the bar

Ian McDonald from Dublin got something of a shock recently when he was charged 95c each for both a Toffee Crisp and a packet of Starburst sweets in a Spar shop. "With a child in tow, I had not had the foresight to check the receipt while still at the till and the large queue behind me prevented me from going back to complain," he writes. At first he thought that the price of chocolate must have increased dramatically since he had last bought a bar so in the interests of research bought another Toffee Crisp in another Spar shop, this time in Shankill. "There I was charged 78c. How can a shop justify a price that is nearly 23 per cent higher than other shops? It's scandalous," he writes.

And, staying with the price of chocolate, a Dundrum reader has been similarly put out by the price of a bar of Cadbury Bournville. While the recommended price seems to be 72c, he says he was charged 90c in shop in Skerries last summer. "Most shops seem to be charging 90c," he writes although he points out that a shop in the Swan Centre in Rathmines sells the bars for considerably less than this.