Raise added a couple of new features last month for customers who buy gift cards on the site. One was the ability to manually update balances when you partially redeem them, while the other was to mark cards as used.
Both of those were helpful developments and they’ve now gone a step further in making it easier to track balances. That’s because you can now track the remaining balances of more than 150 gift card brands with the tap or click of a button.
If you go into your Raise account, you should see a ‘Check Balance’ button. Simply tap or click that and you’ll see the updated balance.
I love this development as it’s much quicker and easier to track the balances this way than Googling ‘x brand gift card balance check’ and manually typing in the card number and PIN. I’ve also had issues in the past where certain brands won’t let me check more than one card at a time, so you either have to clear your cookies or do each check in a brand new incognito window. Other balance checking pages don’t allow you to use a VPN which sucks if you’re trying to check on a public WiFi network.
There are a few limitations with this service. First, it won’t work on cards you bought from Raise before September 8, 2019. You’re also limited to checking the balance of a card three times. Once you’ve checked it three times, Raise will still allow you to manually update the balance or mark it as used, you just won’t be able to have Raise initiate the check.
The ‘Check Balance’ button won’t be displayed if a card has a zero balance. Rather than assuming that’s the reason for the button not appearing though, it’d be best to check the balance yourself, then mark the card as used just in case this new tool has teething problems.
It’s great to see Raise continuing to make improvements such as these. They’re just little things but it makes the second hand buying (and subsequent using) experience much better.
I don’t sell on Raise, so I’m afraid I’ve got nothing to offer on that front.