Hugely Disappointing Gift
Hugely disappointing gift.<br /><br />I'm not a big fan of gift cards in general, but I have received Amazon cards in the past.  Amazon has a huge selection of items to purchase, great prices, and there were no problems activating and using my card - so that's fine.  ... but that was Amazon, and Staples is not Amazon.  By way of comparison, the Staples gift card has been a huge disappointment.<br /><br />First, there is NO VALUE PRINTED ON THE CARD, so you have to go check the balance to even know what you have.  Then when I went to the Staples website to check the cards balance, it kept telling me that the card number was invalid (though I verified both the card number and PIN were correctly entered several times, and even tried it a second and third time from another computer with a different browser).  I was beginning to think I had a counterfeit card, but decided to re-check the card using the Staples 888 phone number, and that did work, so the card was fine.  So the first disappointment was that Staples wasted over an hour of my time just trying to get the card to validate on the Staples website, only to find that the Staples website was screwed up for some reason, though the card was fine.<br /><br />The Staples phone verification system reported that my card is a valid $25 giftcard, but once I was finally able to verify the cards balance using the phone system, I was in for another HUGE disappointment, because prices at Staples are so horrible that, even after checking my local Staples &#34;Weekly Ad&#34; Sales and applying my &#34;Gift Card&#34; I found that in most cases, I might as well just buy the item on Amazon.  In fact, in some cases the prices were so bad that I would have actually saved money to throw my gift card in the garbage and just pay Amazon's full price (because Amazon's everyday price was more than $25 dollars less).<br /><br />The good thing about a gift card is that the person who receives the card has 'mad money' that they can use to pick out whatever gift they want, the BAD thing is that if you give them a gift card to a store with LOUSY PRICES, then they may feel like their windfall gift money is being spent foolishly and feel bad (which pretty much sums up my feelings dealing with Staples).<br /><br />Also, all my past experiences with Staples have seemed to involve that old-school bait-and-switch sales model where they dangle a sale item in your face, just to try to get you into the store, then RIP YOU OFF by telling you &#34;So sorry, the sale item you want isn't available, but we do have a fine selection of our outrageously overpriced non-sale items, so wouldn't you rather have one of those instead?&#34;  Staples is not as bad as Best Buy (who are the worst scum in the universe in regard to bait-and-switch B.S.) but after buying on Amazon for the last few years, I am not ancious to play ANY of the brick an mortar store games of scampering around town like a rat in a maze trying to find that 'deal' before it disapears.<br /><br />On Amazon, prices may change over time, but if an item is listed as available for a certain price, then you can buy it at the price shown, period, end of story.
Rating: 1 stars