Many of you are familiar with Raise.com I used them a lot during renovations of my home, and it's one of the few lingering apps that I might consider using to save a buck or two.
The concept of Raise is that you can buy a discount gift card on your phone and have it delivered instantly when shopping, it can save 5-10% on your purchase.
The problems with Raise:
The giftcards don't always arrive instantly, so you are at the mercy of the transaction if you want to actually check out and pay. In many big stores that can mean that you need to run to the front entrance to get a signal, hope it has arrived, and then checkout, or do that 20 times until it does. If it doesn't, you've got a cart full of items and you can't check out, because you've committed your transaction to Raise.
Secondly, Raise doesn't update the value of partial gift cards, so if you buy 3 cards to check out with, and leave a balance on one, you have to log in to the merchant site to remember which card is which and has a value... this is a pain in the arse.
Lastly, if there is a problem with the transaction, you are stuck with the card, as just happened to me.
We were recently in a shop that was far from home picking up a few items for an upcoming trip. I decided to buy a Raise.com card on the fly and checkout. The card 'arrived' after just one visit to the front of the store for a signal...
However, on checkout, the Raise.com App crashed, refusing to bring up the card. I tried to work around this by going to the Raise.com website and pulling up the giftcard there. (all this while standing in line) this required two factor authentication (a code sent to my phone to enter into the website).
The code arrived, didn't work. Tried it 3-4 times.. nothing. While in line.
Paid with my credit card, apologized for holding up everything, left feeling like an idiot.
I emailed Raise about this 8 days ago (minutes after the purchase) and asked them to refund me. They got back to me today saying they wouldn't.. I'm now the proud owner of a gift card to a store far from home, which may or may not be something I could pull up in the future.
Just another story of lame customer service and how we waste our time in order to save a few bucks.. in this case, it was a $25 card I bought for $23.
I almost decided to threaten them to deal with this in a DYKWIA moment, but that would mean if they did cave in and refund the card it was because of my ability to influence their target market, and they'd go on to screw you guys over in similar situations.
So Raise.com keep your $23, you're dead to me.
The concept of Raise is that you can buy a discount gift card on your phone and have it delivered instantly when shopping, it can save 5-10% on your purchase.
The problems with Raise:
The giftcards don't always arrive instantly, so you are at the mercy of the transaction if you want to actually check out and pay. In many big stores that can mean that you need to run to the front entrance to get a signal, hope it has arrived, and then checkout, or do that 20 times until it does. If it doesn't, you've got a cart full of items and you can't check out, because you've committed your transaction to Raise.
Secondly, Raise doesn't update the value of partial gift cards, so if you buy 3 cards to check out with, and leave a balance on one, you have to log in to the merchant site to remember which card is which and has a value... this is a pain in the arse.
Lastly, if there is a problem with the transaction, you are stuck with the card, as just happened to me.
We were recently in a shop that was far from home picking up a few items for an upcoming trip. I decided to buy a Raise.com card on the fly and checkout. The card 'arrived' after just one visit to the front of the store for a signal...
However, on checkout, the Raise.com App crashed, refusing to bring up the card. I tried to work around this by going to the Raise.com website and pulling up the giftcard there. (all this while standing in line) this required two factor authentication (a code sent to my phone to enter into the website).
The code arrived, didn't work. Tried it 3-4 times.. nothing. While in line.
Paid with my credit card, apologized for holding up everything, left feeling like an idiot.
I emailed Raise about this 8 days ago (minutes after the purchase) and asked them to refund me. They got back to me today saying they wouldn't.. I'm now the proud owner of a gift card to a store far from home, which may or may not be something I could pull up in the future.
Just another story of lame customer service and how we waste our time in order to save a few bucks.. in this case, it was a $25 card I bought for $23.
I almost decided to threaten them to deal with this in a DYKWIA moment, but that would mean if they did cave in and refund the card it was because of my ability to influence their target market, and they'd go on to screw you guys over in similar situations.
So Raise.com keep your $23, you're dead to me.