Questions About Using a Webcertificate - Transaction Denied

[BethR]

Hi All!

I have $22 in a webcertificate from using My Points awards. I see that I have lost $3 for account maintainence so I thought that I would try to clear out the account as best as I could.

I want to buy a $20 GC for the Rainforest Cafe. There is a $3.25 shipping charge on it, so the total is $23.25.

I added $2 to my WC so my total in my account is now $24.00.

I just tried to use my WC and I got "Transaction Denied." I checked all of the information and everything is OK. I tried a couple of more times and continue to get "Transaction Denied."

So if any of you are WC experts, could you tell me what I might be doing wrong and what I should do to get this to work?

Thanks!

Beth

 

[Disneefun]

Since these work like a credit card, you may be running up against the fact that some merchants also put through an extra $1 (some take more) charge to make sure the acct. is valid prior to making the actual charge. I know a lot of places do this and it can be a pain. If you're using a regular cc, it will come off before you get your statement so you never have to pay it, but with a WC, it just comes back that the acct. can't cover the amt. you're charging (purchase price plus the $1). This is my best guess as to your problem. As to what to do about it, I'm not sure there is anything you can do -- at least not that I know of. Sorry.

 

[BethR]

Since these work like a credit card, you may be running up against the fact that some merchants also put through an extra $1 (some take more) charge to make sure the acct. is valid prior to making the actual charge. I know a lot of places do this and it can be a pain. If you're using a regular cc, it will come off before you get your statement so you never have to pay it, but with a WC, it just comes back that the acct. can't cover the amt. you're charging (purchase price plus the $1). This is my best guess as to your problem. As to what to do about it, I'm not sure there is anything you can do -- at least not that I know of. Sorry.

Thanks. I wonder if it would go through if I added another dollar? So I would end up "paying" $3.06 out of pocket for a $20 GC. That still isn't too bad.

 

[Jessd]

I just redeemed mine. When I had my first $25 in my account, I went to redeem and it wouldn't go through. They tried to charge an extra $1 temporarily to make sure there was enough in the account. Of course, when they took $1, there wasn't enough for my $25 Disney card. I e-mailed webcertificate and they told me that you had to have an extra $1 in your account. They added the $1 to my account for me.

Since then DH and my mom got enough from my points to get webcertificates too and I added them to my webcertificate account. I ordered my $75 Disney card with $76 in my webcertificate account. There are two charges, one for the $75 and one for $1.

I thought most places gave free shipping on gift cards?

 

[Disneefun]

It might -- would be worth a try, anyway. And you'd probably get the extra $1 back, once the transaction was processed and the charge cleared from your "card." The, of course, you have a $1 WC that I don't know what you'd do with, but one problem at a time, right?

 

[BethR]

Thanks for the info Jess. Now I know I am being stupid, but when you said that Webcertificate added a dollar for you, did they put the dollar in for you? Or did you have to pay the $1 from another account?

You would think that it should be free to get a gift card, but I looked for Red Lobster GCs and RFC GCs and they both charge a shipping fee.

 

[BethR]

It might -- would be worth a try, anyway. And you'd probably get the extra $1 back, once the transaction was processed and the charge cleared from your "card." The, of course, you have a $1 WC that I don't know what you'd do with, but one problem at a time, right?

Yeah, it's crazy! Trying to get rid of "free money" and then having to pay for it.

 

[debster812]

Thanks for the info Jess. Now I know I am being stupid, but when you said that Webcertificate added a dollar for you, did they put the dollar in for you? Or did you have to pay the $1 from another account?

You would think that it should be free to get a gift card, but I looked for Red Lobster GCs and RFC GCs and they both charge a shipping fee.

I'm not Jess, but the same thing happened to me a couple of years ago, and WebCertificate added an additional dollar to my account, so I could make the transaction go through. I called, spoke to a DELIGHTFUL rep, and it took all of about 2 minutes.

Good Luck!

 

[BethR]

Well, after bouncing back and forth between Webcertificate's and RFC's customer services a couple of times, it came down to RFC (Landry Restaurants) will not accept Webcertificates. BIG

So I just hopped over to Disney Shopping and placed an order for a Disney gift card and the order went right through! I CAN use this GC when I am at Disney, can't I?

 

[Jessd]

Thanks for the info Jess. Now I know I am being stupid, but when you said that Webcertificate added a dollar for you, did they put the dollar in for you? Or did you have to pay the $1 from another account?

You would think that it should be free to get a gift card, but I looked for Red Lobster GCs and RFC GCs and they both charge a shipping fee.

Webcertificate added the dollar for me. I e-mailed them about the problem I was having and they put it in my account. Maybe because they know that you can never really spend that dollar because it will always be needed for the temporary fee.