On Your Side: Euless woman says Walmart gift card was drained; others experience similar issue
EULESS, Texas - If you received a Walmart gift card this holiday season, one local woman warns that you need to check the balance on the card immediately.
The funds on her gift card were drained before she could use it.
"I'm not gonna shop at Walmart anymore. Which really makes me sad," said Toni Tucker of Euless.
During a visit to her local store, she made a return without a receipt.
"Since I didn't have my receipt, my only option was to be issued a gift card," Tucker explained.
When she went to use the card, the entire amount had been drained.
"They printed out a transaction history for me, which showed my gift card was used in December from store 9115," Tucker said.
We should point out that 9115 is not a store identifier, but instead, according to a Walmart spokesperson, an internal code to identify an online purchase.
Nevertheless, Tucker had not spent the balance in a store or online.
She contacted Walmart and was told in an email with customer care, "Your case does not fall under the terms and conditions or a compromised gift card. We are unable to refund or replace this card."
So instead, she turned to us.
"I've watched you for so long, and I've seen you help so many people and get things resolved," Tucker said to FOX 4's Steve Noviello. "You were the first person I thought of when this issue came up."
She says she is sure she was the victim of fraud, and she says she thinks she's not the only one.
Receipts posted to online message boards from other Walmart shoppers say their gift cards were drained too.
Stores in South Carolina, Florida and in Las Vegas, where a local foster care agency says they tried to spend $1,500 in donated Walmart gift cards, but the money had been spent.
The transactions were coded as 9115.
"They won't make good on it. They won't replace the card. They won't give you your money back. They send it off to the fraud department and that's it," said Tucker.
We had better luck than she did.
After we reached out to Walmart, they are now issuing a "courtesy refund" for her gift card balance.
We asked for an explanation of why the transaction history receipts for those fraudulently drained gift cards are coded as 9115.
"We want to be clear that online rumors of a scam at Walmart store 9115 are false," said a Walmart spokesperson.
Instead, they redirected our attention to their partnership with the Secret Service, which has returned more than $4 million to elderly Walmart shoppers who were duped into buying gift cards for scammers, which was not quite what we were asking about.
It was also not the answer Toni Tucker says she was looking for.
"It's obvious they don't care," she said.