Consumer complaint received 2023-10-09
Product: Prepaid card — General-purpose prepaid card
Issue: Trouble using the card — Trouble using the card to spend money in a store or online
Company: Incomm Holdings Inc. (WA)

On XX/XX/2023, I purchased a Vanilla Visa Gift Card from XXXXXXXX XXXX in XXXX, NC and placed a value of {$65.00} on the card upon purchase. I gave the card to a friend in my presence, and when he opened it, there was only card stock inside with a photocopied image of the back of a card, but no front and no visa number. Therefore, the card can not be used because the Visa number information is completely missing. 
Our first step was that within 12 hours my friend returned to the XXXX with everything ; the gift card receipt showing the value, the packaging and the card stock that was inside instead of the Visa card. My friend was told by a manager that they needed to bring the long form of the receipt back in. ( Im not sure why because all the needed information was on the gift receipt. ) This XXXX was XXXX min away from where I was staying. So before I drove back I decided that we would call the XXXX number for Vanilla Visa .

Vanilla Visa was incredibly difficult to get a person on the phone. You are given options on the automated line to push a number if you are having a specific problem. None of the options matched my issue, but I tried to push a number to at least get started. But in every case I had to enter the Visa number of the card I had purchased. The problem, of course, was that there was no card number on the product I purchased. When I was unable to give a number, the call would disconnect me. I tried several times with always the call being disconnected because I could not enter a Visa card number. There was no option to push a number if you do not have a Visa card number.

I went online then and looked on the get human website. The number given is the same, but if you scroll to the bottom there were 2 other numbers given. I tried one of them and reached a representative after a very long time of being on hold. The representative was able to verify that the card indeed had XXXX on it, so, he said, the money was safe. But he told me that if I started this process, it would go to their research department and it would be at minimum 30 days before I would have any resolution. I am sure this is told to customers to encourage people to try to resolve it at the store where it was purchased, and that is exactly what I said I would do. It seemed to me ridiculous that I would not have any information or chance at this process being looked at before a month was passed. And since we had been told to bring the long form of the receipt into XXXX, I hoped it would be resolved more quickly there. 
So I drove XXXX min each way to return to the XXXX with the long version of my receipt. We brought all the packaging and gift receipts as well. This time the manager said that I would have to contact corporate because she could not help us. She was very dismissive and seemed not to care that a customer came in and purchased a fraudulent item. She made no effort to connect with us or show that she even wanted to help. ( This was at store number XXXX, XXXX XXXX in XXXX, NC. The managers name was XXXX. I did not feel that she was horrible- just dismissive and uninterested in our situation, despite the fact that she had told us to bring the long form in, and I told her that I drove XXXX minutes to do as she requested. ) I then called the XXXX corporate number that same day. They said someone would call me back within 24 hours. Four or five business days later, I called *them* back since I had heard nothing. This time I was told it was sent to the research department and someone would call me within 7 days from when that department got the information. The information had reached the department just the day before my call, so about 3 business days from when I originally called. I asked if there was anyway this could be expedited because I was flying back home within the week and I do not live near any XXXX stores. There was nothing this person could do, she said it was out of her control. 
( My case number was XXXX ) Finally I got a voicemail from XXXX. This call sounded as if the person was inside a bathroom on speaker mode and so it was echoing terribly and difficult to understand. The message was, however, simply that I needed to call the Visa Giftcard company and deal with this through them. I have no idea why it took so many days only to be told that they would not help. There was no apology that I was having this experience or any efforts at making sure the customer ( me ) understood the process and why in the end it was decided that they could not help. 
So now I must begin the process again with Vanilla Visa, knowing that I will have difficulty reaching the company, will be on long holds, and more than a month to wait for them to resolve this issue. 
So, I am lodging this complaint first and foremost with Vanilla Gift Card. They make it extremely difficult to find customer service and attempt to discourage you from using their services to resolve the issue. Im dreading entering this process again, which is exactly what I think they hope people will do. They likely hope they will get customers to not follow up because it is so difficult on the consumer and takes so much time. 
I also feel that this was handled poorly by XXXX. They could have handled this much more professionally. It should not take more than two weeks to tell a customer that they will not be helped.

I have spent hours on trying to resolve this and I am apparently no closer to this being resolved than I was 12 hours after our purchase. 
Thank you for having a place for consumers to express poor service.