Good morning everyone, as of 8am PT 7/23/2015, the Gift Card Mall activation website is down and is not allowing any Visa Gift Cards to be activated. I purchased a few $200 VGCs last week from Staples.com and was trying to activate the gift cards online last night. I got the below error message that says “We cannot process your request at this time. Please try again or call 1-877-426-2551.” After calling the below number (open from 8am-12am CT), the nice rep confirmed that their activation website has been down for a few days and that she could activate them all over the phone.
After giving her my order number (conveniently printed in the upper right corner of the page), my full name and bill address (also printed on the same page), she submitted a request to have all the VGCs activated. She stated that the activation process can take up to 2 hours, but it was more likely going to take just a few minutes. To see if the cards were activated properly, call the number on the back of the VGC and do a balance inquiry. If you hear a dollar amount, then your VGCs are activated properly and you can then use them.
I still find it fascinating that Gift Card Mall goes through the trouble of mailing out a letter with all the gift card activation codes and then they don’t even need it for over the phone activations. Seems like any criminal could intercept the package, open up the gift cards, call to activate the VGCs and state the name, order number, and mailing address that is printed on the paper. I wrote about this security hole in May 2014 (How to Activate $200 Visa Gift Cards from Staples.com *without* the Activation Codes) and nothing has changed to the activation process since.
Anyway, long story short, if you ordered VGCs from Staples.com in the past week, call Gift Card Mall to activate the VGCs, wait a few hours, and then spend your VGCs. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!
P.S. The SF Travel Hackers Meetup is tonight at 7pm (link), hopefully I will see some of you there,
P.P.S. I will be in Phoenix this weekend for the FIrst2Board Phoenix Sessions Travel Conference (link), hopefully I will see some of you there too. I will be the guy wearing the Travel with Grant shirt, don’t talk to my evil twin brother who is not wearing a Travel with Grant shirt, he is out to steal all your miles, you have been warned!
Are you aware of any retail chain or method for liquidating Amex gift cards? It seems to me that someone commented on one of your blog posts about a standard dependable way to do it.
That’s a great question. I have a $200 AGC that I bought at OD a few days ago that I need liquidate. I don’t have many easy options. Maybe Walgreens will let me pay with AGC to buy a VGC.
Grant I wrote about this yesterday. You can still activate them by going to the old activation website through the backdoor link. Details here: http://milestomemories.boardingarea.com/staples-visa-gift-card-activation/
Ahh, good post Shawn. I must have missed your post. My bad.
I had this problem last week and again yesterday.
I think it actually took less time to call than to activate each card online!
It is so quick and easy to call, I might just do that from now on :)
Phone is always faster with those.
No doubt. I activated all 9 VGCs with 1 call :)