Follow-up: the Tom Thumb gift card saga

Reference this previous post, in which I detail the horror and shame (ok, not such much) my wife experienced in trying to give a Tom Thumb-purchased gift card to one of our neighbors. Today, after four weeks and one superficial e-mail exchange, I got this detailed and personal response from a Tom Thumb/Safeway representative.

Dear Mr. Mahaney:

Thank you for your recent correspondence regarding the gift card incident at your local Tom Thumb store. I do apologize for the confusion this has caused both you and your wife and your neighbors. Here is some information I did find regarding gift cards, which I hope will be helpful to you in the future.

Generally, we do not return or refund any gift cards (except California where it is required by law to refund gift cards upon request). All refunds, returns, and disputes must be accompanied by the gift card, sales receipt, and the activation receipt.

For Partner Cards, we cannot receive credit from the retailer for returning a card. All requests for refunds on Partner Cards should be referred to the applicable retailer.

Lost, Stolen or Damaged (unreadable) Cards Gift Cards are considered like cash. We cannot retrieve any gift card numbers from the club card or from any transaction information. Therefore, we cannot replace lost or stolen cards. We cannot devalue gift cards to provide a refund. Damaged Cards can be taken to the store for replacement/redemption.

I apologize that the cashier did not activate the card. This should have been resolved when your wife returned to the store for assistance. Your comments are important to us and will be forwarded to the store manager for further review and corrective action. We want to ensure this type of problem doesn't occur in the future. Thank you again for taking the time to let us know how we can better serve you.

Better late than never, I suppose. Of course, there should be a little more urgency at the Flower Mound Thumb these days, with the brand-new Kroger Signature store soon to open.