Cardpool quietly made a change to its guarantee a few weeks ago and it’s sadly a negative change for consumers.
In the past, they offered a one year guarantee for the cards they sell, so if you found any of its value drained before you’d had a chance to use it, Cardpool would provide a refund.
On September 1, 2020, they reduced their guarantee from one year to 60 days. Here’s how they’ve explained it:
Cardpool is committed to making our customers happy by offering the highest level of service possible. If you purchase any gift card from Cardpool, we guarantee it will be valid at the merchant and for the dollar amount specified on your order. We make such guarantees for up to 60 days from the date of your purchase. If you are unable to redeem your card for the full amount specified in your order during that time, please contact us for a refund. Our guarantee is subject to a maximum of $1,000 lifetime per customer. The Cardpool Purchase Guarantee is subject to the Cardpool Terms of Use.
The Purchase Guarantee is NOT applicable to gift cards whose issuers or retailers are no longer honoring gift cards, whether due to bankruptcy, elimination of their gift card program, or other causes.
This new guarantee is effective as of September 1st, 2020. For purchases before this date, the only difference is the length of the guarantee, which was 1 year. The term was reduced to encourage you to use the card quickly after purchasing it.
There’s some impressive BS in there. “We’re committed to making you happy by offering the highest level of service possible. The way in which we’re doing that is by making a change that will make you unhappy by providing a lower level of service.”
The final line is a particularly good one. “The term was reduced to encourage you to use the card quickly after purchasing it.” I guess that’s entirely truthful, but it was done to reduce Cardpool’s liability by offloading the risk to customers, not as a way to benefit those who bought the cards from them.
The $1,000 cap is arguably worse. Not sure if that was there before
I wondered that myself initially, but the announcement said that the only change was going from 1 year to 60 days, so I took that to mean that the cap was always there.
[…] noticing that Cardpool had reduced its gift card guarantee from one year to 60 days, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to find out who now owns […]