How to replace a lost or stolen gift card
This articles source creditcards.com
Many retailers give options for replacing missing cards
By Melody Warnick
The reason so many of us love gift cards — they’re a lot like cash — is also the reason they can be hard to replace when they’re stolen or lost.
Some retailers, including Wal-Mart, even put the onus exclusively on the consumer and refuse to replace lost or stolen gift cards altogether. However, in most cases, there are steps you can take to ensure that you haven’t just thrown away $50 if that gift card accidentally ends up in the trash.
With an estimated $66 billion in gift cards purchased in 2008, chances are good that you’re hanging on to one or two (or five or six), and you may not know precisely where some of them are. If your card is lost or stolen, most retailers (see chart below) are sympathetic — but only if you can prove that you actually purchased the card.
“The receipt is your first line of defense if you lose a card,” says Kwame Kuadey, founder of GiftCardBlogger.com. “If you lose the receipt and lose the card, you’re pretty much out of luck.”
What to do when your gift card goes astray
If you held on to your receipt — or if the generous soul who gave you the gift card in the first place can produce one — contact the retailer immediately. Most maintain toll-free numbers (available on the card itself or, since that’s gone, on the store’s Web site) manned by customer service representatives who can cancel the card and work on issuing you a new one.
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If it’s a store card, you shouldn’t have to pay for the replacement; similarly, American Express now offers to replace lost or stolen gift cards for free (if you have the original card number). With other bank-issued gift cards — for instance, one from Visa or MasterCard — expect a replacement fee of $5 to $15.
No receipt? A few stores may offer a replacement over the phone if you have the gift card number. Otherwise, even a credit card statement proving that you made a $50 transaction at The Gap won’t be sufficient, since the purchase could have been for anything.
Your only other outs include trying to get reimbursement from PayPal or your credit card company if you ordered a card online and it never arrived, or replacing a gift card stolen from your home through your homeowner’s or renter’s insurance coverage. (Check your policy for coverage details.)
Prevention and protection
Even with a receipt in hand, it’s a hassle to cancel and then replace a lost or stolen gift card. Here’s how to keep your cards safer now and how some of these steps can make your life easier if a card does go missing: