Buying and selling gift cards is an important part of the miles and points game. It’s a way to increase your credit card spending with is helpful with signup bonuses and ongoing points earning. But it’s not always a risk free game. There’s lots of gift card fraud out there and then there’s gift card buying/selling websites that can suddenly go out of business. TPM is one example.
But now there’s another website that seems to have the same fate. Gift Card Mart is having some serious issues, as Miles to Memories reports. The website is loading very slowly, or not loading at all. And if it does load, you will see the following message:
Due to technical difficulties, we are currently unable to accept purchase or selling orders. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding.
And here’s the statement that they gave MtM:
We initially suspended customer gift card sales under the assumption that it was a short-term necessity while we fixed some underlying technical issues; however, after a few days, it became increasingly likely that the outage was going to take longer than expected.
As a gift card exchange, our business model depends on our ability to sell the cards we purchase and with all but our ACH Debit customers being cut off from making new purchases, suspending further card acquisitions was the next logical step to prevent a ballooning balance sheet and protect against any structural instability.
Regrettably, this service outage has now persisted for several weeks and consumed significantly more time and resources than anticipated, and though we don’t yet have an estimated resolution date, I can assure you that we are working hard to restore normalcy as quickly as possible, and we’re looking forward to launching a brand new purchasing experience for our customers.
I want to sincerely thank everyone for their patience during this challenging time, and I am looking forward to putting this operational hiccup behind us.
Guru’s Wrap-up
I haven’t done business with them in a while now. But if you’re owed any money, this is worrying news. Hopefully it is just technical issues as they claim. Their website has had numerous issues in the past few years, so I wouldn’t give up all hope for now.
Let me know in the comments if you’ve had any contact or issues with them, or if you have done business with them recently.
