Can I get a refund for this Sears gift card?

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By Christopher Elliott

Joshua Rome used a $500 Sears gift card to purchase a dishwasher — that he then canceled after it never showed up. He expected a full cash refund. But the company told him no, it’s not possible to get a refund of a Sears gift card.  Now Rome wants to know if we can help convert his card to cash.  Is that possible?

Question

I need your help. I ordered a dishwasher from Sears recently, but it failed to deliver the appliance twice. I decided to cancel my order and ask for a full refund. I paid for the dishwasher with a combination of $467 from my credit card and $500 from a Sears gift card.

After many calls, I received a $467 credit to my credit card. But Sears would not refund the $500 gift card. Instead, the company refunded it back to a gift card.

Sears says it can only return funds to the original form of payment. I explained that my daughter had only purchased the Sears gift card so that I could buy a new dishwasher. Now that I canceled the order, I believe she should get her money back, too. Sears has offered a 10 percent discount on a new dishwasher, but I just want my daughter to get a refund of her gift card.

It’s been three months since my request. Sears has been silent. Can you convince Sears to give my daughter a refund of this gift card, please? — Joshua Rome, Wells, Vt.

Answer

Sears is right — and wrong. Right, in the sense that it can keep your daughter’s money. Regardless of her reason for buying a gift card, Sears is clear that the terms of her purchase say she isn’t owed a refund: “Prescription drugs and gift cards cannot be returned,” it says on the Sears site.

Sears is equally clear about how it handles refunds: “They’ll be issued in the same form as the original method of payment.”

In other words, Sears can refund your daughter’s money to the gift card under its terms and conditions.

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But Sears was also wrong in that it gave you such a runaround with your dishwasher. It seems Sears realized that it had failed spectacularly on that, which is why it offered you a discount on a future dishwasher purchase. That’s a nice gesture, but I can also understand why you’d rather buy a dishwasher somewhere else.

The good news: Your daughter will receive a refund of the unused Sears gift card

You can avoid this type of situation by carefully researching the business before making a purchase. Often, you can find out if a company is reliable with its deliveries (and also, whether its products usually work). We’ve had a case or two with Sears that might have given you pause. (Related: This is why Sears’ problems are a customer service disaster.)

Also, your daughter might have just written you a check or given you a preloaded Visa card. Companies benefit from gift cards because they’re restrictive — you can only use them on purchases within the company — and they’re nonrefundable. (Here’s how to win a credit card dispute.)

Even though your daughter wasn’t entitled to a refund of her Sears gift card , I thought there were extenuating circumstances. Your daughter had purchased the $500 gift card so you could buy a Sears dishwasher. I think an appeal to one of the executive contacts at Sears might have yielded a better result. We list the names, numbers and email addresses of the Sears managers in our database.

I contacted the company on your behalf. Sears reviewed your case and offered to either send you an upgraded dishwasher at no extra charge or to refund your daughter’s $500 to her credit card, as you requested.

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Christopher Elliott

Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that empowers consumers to solve their problems and helps those who can't. He's the author of numerous books on consumer advocacy and writes three nationally syndicated columns. He also publishes the Elliott Report, a news site for consumers, and Elliott Confidential, a critically acclaimed newsletter about customer service. If you have a consumer problem you can't solve, contact him directly through his advocacy website. You can also follow him on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or sign up for his daily newsletter. He is based in Rio de Janeiro.

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