I am a big gift card buyer. I buy gift cards for personal use and as gifts. I also use them as giveaways.

There are four places online were I regularly buy gift cards and I had never had a single issue on neither of them. I buy them on Amazon, Raise, Cardpool and Paypal.

But today I was looking to get a $25 Zappos eGift card and since Raise only had $50 and up and Paypal did not carried anything from Zappos I decided to try Gyft since I had a $5 off coupon to use on my first order.

So I placed the order using their iOS app and paid using Pay on my iPhone. I was charged $20 and though I was done. Nope.

First I got an email stating that my payment was pending and that I will receive my card after the payment had been confirmed.

A couple of minutes later I received a notification on the iOS app that the balance was updated. I thought finally I got what I paid for. Nope.

When I when to the app I got a cryptic message saying Unable to process request.

So I decided to go to the gyft website from my mac. When I tried to log in I just got the following message:

We've noticed unusual activity on your account. To keep your account safe, we need to confirm your identity.Please check your email for instructions from us. Thank you!

WTF?

The thing is I never got the email they said I needed to follow up with. I checked my credit card account and could see the charge pending but I still could not log in or received my gift card.

Now like I mentioned before I regularly buy gift cards online and this is the first time having an issue so this isn’t a very good first impression of Gyft.

I just fired them an email at [email protected] and I am waiting on a replay.

So I received an answer from someone at Gyft at least they get points for answering relativity fast. Unfortunately it seems as the person replaying was just filling on the blanks of a template of was of absolutely no help.

I still can come to terms at what may have triggered this action maybe is that their “fraud” algorithm picked my hispanic last name as a red flag. Coz really I have no explanation.

So if you are considering using Gyft I will advise against it. After all there are better options like my personal favorite Raise.

UPDATE:
Today I got an email from Alex at Gyft asking me to verify my account using Netverify. I had to provide a picture of my drivers license and a headshot. In less than 10 minutes the account was restated and the previous order was refunded. I placed a new order this time for a $50 Zappos eGift card and received my card in less than 5 minutes. I still don’t understand what caused the account to get flagged in the first place or why I did not received the verification email yesterday. But at least my name has been cleared at Gyft. I don’t know if I will still use Gyft after this experience but at least I know I can if I want to. Hopefully they will be more straight forward in the future and work any issue on the backend regarding account validations.