Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

Last Christmas, she gave me a card.

The very next day, I tucked it away.

This year, to save me from tears

I won’t accept gift cards from Uber.

Last Christmas, a friend gifted me a $50 gift card for Uber Eats. It was a thoughtful gift, a card she had purchased at Giant Eagle. I put it away for a special occasion.

One day, I pulled it out to use and realized a bottle of cough syrup had stained the card, rendering the secret code illegible.

So I contacted Uber Eats after a lot of digging to find a contact. The customer service agent told me I would receive a new code via email after submitting the front and back photos of my ruined card. I dutifully submitted. The code came along a few days later.

That’s when I learned that my very pink illegible card had already been redeemed by someone else named Raven. I contacted Uber again, was left “on hold” for three days and the summarily dismissed because they don’t do refunds nor do they investigate theft. Too bad for me.

Now I don’t know how ‘Raven’ stole my card or figured out the pin given that it never left my possession. I don’t know why Uber left me hanging for an answer. And I don’t know how anyone can protect themselves from this sort of theft because again the card was always with me from a few minutes after it was activated at the grocery store register.

Maybe ‘Raven’ is a super duper computer hacker who managed to get into my stash of gift cards that were in a drawer in my room, steal the code and then dump the cough syrup to cover their tracks?

What’s more likely is that Raven stole the pin code when it was emailed to me from Uber Eats. That’s the only time it was accessible to someone who knows how to do those sort of things. Makes you wonder about the Uber Eats customer service security?

Also, let’s wonder about their common sense. My friend bought this and many other cards – she buys thousands each year for her business – at Wal Mart using a credit card. She’s appalled at the possibility/probability that other cards were compromised and the recipients didn’t want to tell her. She’s had decades in customer service and management – she knows people don’t make waves and internalize the blame in these situations. And companies like Uber Eats count on that approach.

So she’s now contacting her credit card company and Wal-Mart corporate because she has a corporate account. I presume at least the credit card company will do an investigation. They’ll likely contact Uber Eats which will consume some staff time. Will Wal-Mart also investigate? More staff time? Among her regular purchase of thousands of gift cards, none will be Uber. Both because she’s outraged by their policies and because she wants her cards to be reliable.

She’s as much about the principle as anyone, including me.

Obviously Uber Eats will lose far more than the $50 of my gift card with these investigations and reports and lost sales and so forth. Obviously, I won’t order through Uber Eats again because of their poor customer service and the plausibility it was tied to their email system.

I don’t want to get an exception made in my case to shut me up. I want to know how a $50 purchase from corporate America has zero accountability. Something that can easily be tracked.

So for now all I can advise is to avoid Uber Eats and Uber gift cards. Keep your cough syrup secure. And I’ll update you on how Wal Mart and the credit card company respond.

Have you been ripped off by a gift card company? Let me know.