Special
17 reviews
Avoid this company. They do not sell Gift Cards. They sell pre-paid credit cards that may or may not work at the store you select. Their customer service is only by email and is woeful.
Offer from Yello through Commonwealth Bank. Very very convoluted process to activate. I bought $100 to use online, then found that you cannot split payments at a shop eg buy $130 of goods and pay with Yello $100 and top up with $30 of your own money. So essentially your purchase has to be exactly what the gift card value is or just under. Do not recommend at all. I will never buy again.
Tried a few times to buy a gift card and it rejected my card and then cancelled the order saying my card flagged as fraudulent. Amex said they approved the order. Finally I bought a gift card and now it doesn't show in my wallet. Bunch of frauds!
Scam, commonwealth yellow gave me an offer , $10 back if I buy $100 special gift card, so I bought it. But worst customer service ever, no phone number! I wanted to cancel it, so they cancelled but didn’t have my money back yet! I don’t understand how commonwealth bank recommended them!!!
Unable to activate and use the Card – I did purchase the card and got it sent to my mobile. the card was added to the wallet and it says active. When used on merchant site, it's getting rejected saying invalid card. Have to chat with the customer support. it's a waste of time and unwanted stress. looks they have not published their contact details intentionally. Since the payment… Read more
was done through credit card, i would wait for the transaction to be completed and will raise a dispute and take it forward.
NAB is promoting them and giving cashback i hope they do some due diligence and block these kind of vendors.
Apple gift card – I brought an apple gift card for $480 for my daughter for Xmas..it said it would take an hour to process..after the hour I was told it would take 2 days to process so I cancelled it...6 days later I'm fighting apple to return my money when really it should have come straight back to me..I went all through Xmas with no money or a gift for my… Read more
daughter..I've never experienced such terrible customer service...lets cross fingers they give my money back soon.
Gift Card Scam – Stay Away from this place! It is a scam! Don’t waste your money!
Please stay away from this gift card company at all costs! – I wanted to purchase a gift card which should be an easy and seemless process. First, the payment didn't go through. Apparently, my credit card has been "triggered as a fraudulent card."Then I contacted the customer service (via chat), and after waiting more than an hour, the finance team removed my card from the suspicious list, and I finally… Read more
got the gift card.
Second, when I got the gift card, it acts like a virtual debit card, totally different from the traditional gift card (gift card number and pin) that we all used to. I then contacted customer service again. When asked if is there a way to get it like traditional gift card, I was replied with copied info from their website. Only when I repeatedly highlight the problem, the customer service was able to understand the issue. I eventually requested for refund and was told the refund is currently being processed (will update once I get my refund).
Wasted my time!
While I appreciate the customer service's effort, I think the service can be friendlier. Stand in customer's shoes and understand their point of view rather than being a robot.
Clunky slow unreliable eGift card experience – Clunky slow and unreliable to purchase on web or app. Regularly payments fail when trying to pay, despite using different payment methods. Only use it when there is a cashback or reduced fee. Very complicated to check your balance of the card it keeps asking you to log in (even on the app). Cards sold are Mastercard/visa… so Woolworths cards… Read more
purchase can’t be added to the (Everyday) Rewards app but can be added to Apple/GPay. Leap year sale 29 Feb 2024 was a massive fail… website crashing and then when it’s back online I can’t finalise purchase as payments keep failing. Glad it failed as other people have had their cards cancelled or declined even after successfully paying. Prezee on the other hand is how eGift cards should be sold and managed… so easy and seamless! Many balances are updated or can be checked easily… unlike here.
Feb 29 Sale - Scam – Their Feb 29 sale fiasco: 1. On Feb 23, advertised a no-limitation 10% off sitewide on their social media for Feb 29. 2. Pulled their Super Shopper, which is their only useful swappable card, out on Feb 28. 3. On Feb 28, claimed they "made a mistake" and then put limitations of $10 off per customer and only for the first 1500 customers. Classic… Read more
bait and switch - what company takes 5 days to rectify a miscommunication? 4. On the day of the sale, most people couldn't log in. In fact, people who could log in couldn't even use the code as it was invalid. 5. After 1 hour, it finally got fixed and people could buy. However, a ton of customers didn't get their purchases even though money was taken immediately. 6. Their Instagram has now deleted the post and removed commenting, trying to censor angry customers. 7. 2 hours of the sale starting, they close down their site saying "We are working on something Special, and we can’t wait for you to see it. Please check back again soon." thereby blocking anyone from participating in the sale.
Even outside of the sale, I have frustrations over how incompetent of a website this is. Gift card websites need to be secure because they literally deal with money and gift cards are often getting hacked. Special's website is only pretty to look at, but it's one of the worst business websites:
- When you send a verification code, any error on that page will count as "the verification code is wrong". Invalid new password? "Wrong verification code". Too many attempts? "Wrong verification code". How the hell is any customer supposed to trouble shoot the error code if your error message is only appearing on the network request, and not being displayed to customers? Do you expect customers to open the network tab?
- You're literally sending our passwords as a literal string, without any hashing or encryption. This is literally a security risk because once the network call is intercepted, your user's password is leaked. I don't even have to be a security dev to understand this, this is basic rock-bottom knowledge.
I don't know how incompetent of a company you need to be to not only pull a bait and switch tactic, but also fail in any sort of traffic or damage control. Not only that, all Gift card companies need to do is make a simple and secure website that handles like 30-50 products, and you still can't even do that. I can think of many family-run websites that needs only one contract dev and they still do a better job than this. I don't know how Commbank allows such a poorly run scam of a website to participate in their Rewards program.
I literally could be paid to say something nice about this company and I'd struggle to find anything. Special is a company that is so special that they deserve to get run to the ground. I hope employees working in this company leave soon, if they treat their paying customers this poorly, I can only imagine how their treating the staff on their payroll.
Most complicated giftcard system – This giftcard system is the worst, and I have been given a lot of gift cards - it's so complicated and only to be given to someone who is tech savvy and dosent mind handing over personal details online. Firstly, to accept the giftcard and see it, you have to join up to their website. Then, to use it in store, you have to download their app, sign… Read more
up, then are you able to upload the giftcard to your Apple wallet or google pay in order to see the bar code to use the giftcard at the register! Why can't you just add to your Apple Pay from the start? Or better still, why can't you just see the giftcard when it's emailed to you! Why on earth do I have to sign up and download apps just to use a gift card!?? I can't see elderly ppl or ppl who are not tech savvy or those who hate signing up to things etc buying into this rubbish! I will never use again if I can avoid it! Also, when you receive the giftcard it's in the form of a text, no email. Makes it harder to locate- most gift cards are emailed! Incentive to download app and sign up etc. I'm sure all this is to collect your data ...
Hurdles for recipient to access giftcard – I have spent the last 10 minutes hearing my mother complain about having to register accounts and downloading the app. She is now venting her frustrations on me and now is locked out of her account. This is the 'gift' that keeps giving as I need to sort this out now. Far out.
The worst in every way – Whole process is unnecessary and difficult, customer support is non-existent. Many of the cards simply don't work. In the event the card does work you can only buy goods to the exact value of the card you can't split payments if it's over. This process couldn't really be worse.
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Makes everything complicated instead of making it easier. No phone number to contact – Does not show all woolworth gift card detail so that i could manually input payment options. Declined payment when used using nfc. Unable to log in to account to check what is wrong with it. unable to contact or write to customer support. Glitchy app or just disabled submit button when trying to contact them. No other way to contact support.
Could buying and using a voucher be made any more complicated? – Need to download an app to use it. Then must add it to a wallet and for some reason this includes supplying a home address and phone number. Must have a smart phone to use, no backup option available. Why can't you just email a barcode like everyone else?
Be wary - Chargebacks do not work with these gift cards! – BEWARE!: Do not buy Special.com.au VISA or Mastercard Prepaid gift cards! Any Chargebacks you do will not work, and will not be refunded back to you. This is in contravention of the Visa/MC rules and standards, but I emailed them, and they do not care.
Cool concept, but order keeps getting cancelled without explanation – Special Gift Cards are really cool with their themes and it's great they do not incur a purchasing fee. I was able to get in with one order successfully, however my subsequent orders have all been cancelled. Two issues here - one is the fact that they don't tell send out an email to tell you that it's been cancelled (you find out by checking… Read more
your order history), and the second being they don't even respond to your emails when you ask why.
With this experience you'd be better off buying a prepaid Mastercard/Visa/EFTPOS gift card from elsewhere.
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