Gift Cards Still Broken 6-20
Lightspeed needs to throw more resources at fixing the problem with gift cards not redeeming! Why would this go on more than a few days? Do they not know what the problem is? Do they not know HOW to fix it? What is the problem Lightspeed?!?!
My cashiers have basically refused to sell gift cards because of the hassle with them now! My valuable customers wonder why they can't buy gift cards!
I'm going to post every day here regarding this until it is fixed!
10 comments
For redemption, have you tried manually typing in the GC number, and omitting the last digit? It's absurd but it works for me.
If the gift card number is also barcoded in some places, then that last digit is the check digit. Which isn't part of the actual record ID value itself. Makes sense if that works depending on how things are handled.
We are going to try the entry with last digit and see if it works. A faster alternative: Scan it as normal, and just hit the delete key once to get rid of the last digit.
Thanks! I hope that works!
Good luck! Looking forward to hearing the outcome. If it's successful then the Retail support reps have another weapon in their arsenal. Now besides asking if you are using Chrome or Firefox, or asking if you cleared your cache, they can ask if you've deleted the trailing digit...lol.
Further to my scanner comment -- that would only work if your scanner doesn't also automatically hit 'enter'. Once we scan it . . . and the scanner throws the 'enter' at it, you can't manually change the number. BUT . . . manually entering the number is not a big price to pay to get this working.
Thanks to @tpbola for this tip! You made the world a better place today!
Confirmed -- this work-around works!
Chat Transcript regarding this:
Chat started on 21 Jun 2022, 07:25 PM (GMT+0)
(07:25:12)*** Alan Lloyd joined the chat ***(07:25:12)Alan Lloyd
Account ID: xxxxxxxx
Regarding the gift card failures that Lightspeed continues to have: Lightspeed should get this fixed, but here is the work-around to share with the people complaining about this daily.
Hard to believe it took end-users to discover this work-around:
https://community.lightspeedhq.com/en/discussion/comment/24822#Comment_24822
(07:25:59)*** Ty Wark joined the chat ***(07:27:21)Ty Wark
Hey there Alan,
I recalled reading about this and being told this was not a viable solution, let me go check with some collegues about that!
(07:27:44)Alan Lloyd
Okay . . . but we are seeing that it works.
(07:34:07)Ty Wark
So, from what ive gathered, in some cases it may work, but in a smaller set of those cases, you could be using another customers card
(07:34:26)Ty Wark
You would want to check in the Customers > Gift Cards if that card number omitting the last digit exists
(07:36:55)Alan Lloyd
okay - I get it . . . .but tell me this: We have only EVER ordered gift cards ONCE in our three year history with Lightspeed . . .from the preferred recommended vendor at that time. Would they (or any gift card vendor) include anything but sequentially numbered cards (assuming omission of the last digit)? If the cards are sequentially numbered and we are dealing with only ONE run of cards, we should be okay.
(07:37:24)Ty Wark
If you only have the 1 set of sequential, then yes you should be fine!
(07:38:00)Ty Wark
Its that most do not, and have ordered multiple times over the years, especially when they get 11, 12 and 13 digit cards over the years
(07:39:03)Alan Lloyd
Okay . . . now go forth and spread the word on this Ty. This will save a lot of your customers a bunch of headaches. Someone from Lightspeed should post this as a suitable fix somewhere too. But MAINLY . . . your development team should just FIX THIS! Afterall . . . you know that it is a problem with the checksum digit! Thanks for your time today.
(07:40:26)Ty Wark
This is a major bug at the moment, taking up alot of our time with the calls in about this. The nature of a fix is hashing the number and not using the number directly when applying changes to balance, but that is in the works. If you wish to respond to that thread with the mention that is okay to use AS LONG as you have a single sequential set of cards.
(07:41:28)Alan Lloyd
Okay -- I'll do so, in lieu of anyone at Lightspeed doing this for their customers. Wow. Thanks again.
(07:41:32)*** Alan Lloyd left the chat ***
Nice job spreading the Gospel! It's a shame there isn't consistent communication coming from...well, the company that the retailers are paying a pretty penny for this service.
It was obvious that the new gift card implementation wasn't thoroughly tested before pulling the trigger and pushing into production. I liken Retail to having an AMC Matador. You have to know the ins and outs. When you need to pass another car, you need to turn off the A/C. When you need to park the car, you need to pull the emergency brake. And likewise, when you need to get in touch with the car salesman after the sale (aka your account manager), then crickets.
@gregarican I was thinking Yugo . . but yeah Matador. Pretty accurate.
Ok, I have been trying for over a month now to get this fixed. Emailed my account manager many times, chatted with support weekly with no luck, just a "it's a known issue" standard reply. I just tried excluding the check digit and it works! Thank you, thank you! Still not ideal that we have to come up with these workarounds for every issue LS has instead of them just dealing with it, but at least I can clear cards now. I don't understand if that is why it's not working, why they can't implement a fix? Maybe they should review these boards and see everyone solving problems for them. Thanks again.