Raise recently extended their Buyer Protection from 100-days to a year. (Link) Should a gift card turn out depleted for up to one year from purchase, you can contact Raise for a refund.
All reputable second-hand exchanges offer protection for a given timeframe, typically between 45 days and a year. This change puts Raise at the top of the pack in this regard.
Personally, I like buying gift cards on Raise that I’ll use right away, without even needing to enter them in my spreadsheet, but it’s comforting to know there’s a year to use the cards.
If a retailer goes out of business, Raise does not cover and the buyer would take the loss were that to happen. (Note: Typically, you’d have time to use up the card after it becomes known the retailer is going under, so it’s not a huge risk to hold gift cards.)
Raise Sellers
Raise has clarified in an email to sellers that the new 1-year guarantee policy does not change the liability of sellers. They continue to be liable for just 100 days, as before. After that, Raise continues the guarantee on their own.
Is the 100 day policy for sellers still valid?
According to Raise’s website:
“When a card has sold and does not meet the standards set by the 1 Year Money-Back Guarantee, we will refund our buyer and debit the seller accordingly. ”
https://help.raise.com/?b_id=13490
Hmm, I haven’t heard that there was a change
Who the heck buying the cards to hold for an Year? Are you kidding me? Raise full of ‘Scammers,
I mean buyers of the Card scamming sellers, they always refund buyer, without question asked..
Normally Person will sit in the restaurant then scroll APP and buy card to use it right on the SPOT,
Immediately, that’s the normal behavior. Those who are saying: “I bought the card then try using in 3 months and it was depleted??? Gimme a Break! Scammers!!! I stop selling any cards to Raise..
I better turn into Buyer myself will eat for free for expense of the Poor Sellers.. Ridiculous..
I’d love for Raise to comment on why there’s such a sudden rise in gift cards zero balances. I’ve used Raise extensively and had come to rely on it, but lately it seems every card I’ve purchased and didn’t use in the first 60 days had a zero balance. My speculation is that there’s a massive rise in unscrupulous sellers trying to take advantage… I will say Raise.com management seems to understand the need to support the transactions and has really empowered their customer service.
Good to know, I like their app and also like how it can instantly give me the e-gift card number while I’m at the store.
I bought 50 cards last year from Raise. 1 out of every 5 purchases were bad or went bad. That is 20%. I have received a refund in each erroneous card but awaiting a refund on one physical card I purchased. The balance was supposed to be $212.00 and was under $3.00. When I contacted them, they asked to mail the card back. 18 business days later they have no evidence of the returned item and the label they provided has not been updated. They have the worst failure rate by a long shot compared to other discount card sites.
We can help you here, Alex. If you’re still waiting on a refund, please email [email protected] with your order number. Every gift card is verified before being listed on the marketplace and like this post mentions, we protect your purchase for up to one year! We apologize for the inconvenience.
Ok, so a gift card is verified BUT what happens between Raise verifying the balance and the customer receiving a physical card from the buyer, such as with gas cards? The seller still has this card and after a buyer purchases this card they can still drain it before shipping. Sure, you could say the same thing about cards submitted to other exchanges where obviously the seller had the gift card number for cards that do allow online purchases. But in situations where gift cards can only be used in store and not online (and it isn’t just gas cards) you’re not going to have that extra layer of protection where you know you’re buying the card directly from an exchange and not from Raise, which essentially uses an ebay model and facilitates buyer and seller. The result is going to be more fraudulent transactions which translates into a higher risk to the buyer of wasting time getting things straightened out.
Don’t get me wrong, I applaud increasing the buyer protection, especially without increasing the liability to sellers. What I’m pointing out is what, as a buyer, I consider a flaw in the system. I’d like to see Raise not accept transactions of cards, as mentioned above, unless the seller ships the card to Raise and then Raise verifies the balance and sends it to the buyer. In essence, Raise would sell these type of cards in a more “traditional” manner as the other larger exchanges do. Perhaps there’s already controls put in place to handle these higher risk cards that I’m not aware of. What I do know is these are cards I’ve had issues with.
Since you are here on DoC I would really appreciate if you could take a moment and provide your thoughts. TIA.
That’s strange, I had same issue before with Subway cards and they refunded me without sending them back as may be they checked card history and it was surely depleted card before even I received them.
So far I had the best experience with Raise than any other 2nd hand markets. They solidly back buyer at least in my case, they have backed every single time. At least 50+ times (I have more than separate 400+ orders with them). I can say there is a lot more chance of card being fraudulent than some other companies, but in my experience, they have always been most customer friendly in my experience with them.
In my experiences, which is a decent sample size, Raise cards are by far the most likely to be fraudulent. Anyone who understands their business model will understand why (they don’t hold the cards like other exchanges).
While I applaud them for going the extra mile to guarantee their promise to customers, it underscores what is probably a mix of issues with charge backs and competition in the secondary market.
A clarification on seller liability since the post is misleading: The seller liability ends 180 days after the sale, not 100.
Sellers are liable for cards that are used by someone other than the buyer for 100 days, but they’re liable for cards that are closed by the brand (due to fraud etc.) for 180 days, and most Raise reps just rubber stamp cases with the “closed by brand” reason without even looking into it, so it’s safer to say sellers are liable for every card they sell for 180 days after the sale.
I bought a few gift cards from Raise in early December. Hadn’t received them in a month and tracking wasn’t updated at all, so I sent them an email asking what’s up. They refunded me the next day.
What’s the deal with Raise’s tracking information?
I’m not sure why that happened. I get my Raise purchases instantly. Occasionally it will take a few hours for approval. There might have been some glitch at checkout in your case.
Christine – If these were “physical” cards that had to be shipped, it is on the seller to ship them. I assume the seller printed the shipping labels and never actually mailed them.
Sorry about that, Christine! As you know, you can track your shipment within your Raise account. However, this is an internal tracking system and unfortunately the Raise tracking number will not be recognized in the USPS system. Our apologies for any inconvenience.
Is this applicable to prior purchases?
I’d guess so. I think they were unofficially doing this previously, in any case.
In mid-2016, I found a $360 e-gift card sold to me by Raise had zero balance, less than a year after purchase. Does your post suggest Raise would retroactively reimburse me now? At the time, I was only offered a $10 account credit.
I thought they sometimes offered refunds even past 100 days, but I might be wrong or it might depend on the circumstances. In your case they did not, apparently.
But what’s the buyer protection against Raise itself?
Raise accused me of fraud, but Raise wouldn’t tell me what that fraud was, Pretty hard to defend yourself when you don’t even know what the charges are. I spent hours chasing my tail. You know, message us. message says email us. email says call us, call us says email us. Oh, and I’ll get right back to you. Yeah, not once. Months later they offered me $5 to return. No apology. and $5? What’s that? Maybe 30 cents per hour of my time? All this after buying a total of maybe 5 cards. Not happening again.
I’ve bought numerous cards from 2 other pre-owned sources without a problem.
“But what’s the buyer protection against Raise itself?”
It’s called credit card chargeback. Always use a credit card with rock solid customer service reputation – preferably AmEx.
Oh and never ever ever everrrr use a Debit card.
We’re so sorry for the frustrating experience, Lisa. We’d love to look into this further. Please send us an email at [email protected] with your full name and email address and we can try to shed some light on the situation.
And Raise is reading this site too? Hello, Raise, I like your apps.