Originally Posted by
metoo
Bought the Visa Gift Card ($100) 2 days ago. Tried to use it today and was declined. When I registered for my PIN today, I found out that I only had 36 cents left on the card. I called customer service and was told $99 was spent at Walmart the day before.
I am going to be mailed a dispute form to my house and Hopefully, I will get my money back.
First time ever someone stole the money from my gift card
You saying someone managed to run a PIN purchase as WM (or any other type of in-person purchase for that matter) on your card?
I know there was a big scam where folks were stealing unactivated gift cards, then scanning and printing their bar codes, to then tape them overtop of other another batch of stolen GC's. That second batch of stolen GC's with the 'modified' bar codes would then be returned to the store shelf. Obviously at that point if you 'bought' one of those cards you would have actually activated another card that was not in your posession.
The store manager at my local Pavillions (whom knows me as one of his 'best' gift card customers) showed me a sample of these tampered with packages and let me photograph some:
Obviously, even if you didn't notice the tampered with packaging, you could catch this at activation if you look at the activation receipt last 4 digits and match it with the last 4 on your cards bar code on your card -- this is why I always immediately open the packaging after purchase just in case someone managed to do a sophisticated re-packaging without my notice. As best practice I never even take to the register any card that looks like it's packaging has been even remotely tampered with -- even if I'm sure it's just been accidentally dropped and crumpled in the corner or something.
At any rate, don't think this is the same scam you fell victim to. It seems that someone was somehow able to duplicate the magnetic strip information on your card, if, I understood you correctly in that somehow an in-store purchase was made with 'your' (matching activation receipt to bard code) card.