An Apple gift card from Target: a $100 package, a $50 card
An Apple gift card bought at Target had $100 on the package. Inside, the Apple gift card was $50, and the numbers on the two gift cards did not match. Redeem said code not valid. The service desk could not fix it. The refund happened later, with the package, the card and the receipt, in front of a store manager.
What has to be compared is two numbers and two amounts. It is not a missing digit in a form.
A Best Buy gift card from Freshco: the package number is funded, the card number is inactive
On a Best Buy gift card sold at Freshco, the number on the back of the gift card was called inactive on the phone. The number on the package had an activation time and an amount at Blackhawk, and that same number was printed on the receipt. Best Buy said the sale happened at Freshco, and they would not move the package balance onto the Best Buy gift card in hand.
A CVS receipt said activated, and the end of the receipt said prepaid cards are not returnable. The clerk saw “activated” and said the problem was Apple’s. What matched later was this: the number on the outside of the sleeve was not the Apple gift card inside the sleeve. Apple said that Apple gift card had never been loaded.
GiftVeri asks for the number printed on the gift card. A package number that returns money does not make the gift card in your hand that money. An empty pre-query status only means this side has no card data now. It does not cancel the receipt, and it does not replace taking the sleeve and the card back together. If the field length does not match, stop. One Best Buy card of one thousand dollars was longer than today’s 16 digits; deleting the leading digits showed a balance, and checkout still failed. That card is on the US Best Buy page. This page does not teach deleting digits.
The characters have been altered
On an Apple gift card in Australia, the package had activated the original gift card, and the characters left on the card had been scratched into different letters. The characters on the card no longer matched the number that was activated. At that point, the holder goes back to the store that sold it. The holder does not reconstruct the scratched characters, and does not guess the digits that are no longer there.
Those seconds at checkout
The package looked intact. The swap happened in the seconds at the register. That stretch of time is not the same as a package swapped on the shelf. This page does not describe how the swap is done.
Another CVS thread stopped at a status error
A sleeve number that does not match the gift card inside is two different numbers. Another CVS thread stopped at the gift card not activating, or at an error from a status check. The sentence from a status check is not an amount.