Anyways, I buy the gift card and put in all my information and have it sent to her email address.  I call her and ask her to look at her email.  Nothing.  An hour later I ask her to look.  Nothing.  Son of a bitch.  Well it says it may take up to 24 hours for the person to receive so Macy’s has it’s ass covering policy in place.  I figured this was just one of those things where your email may not arrive right away so they want to put 24 hours so nobody gets upset if it doesn’t arrive right away.

So the next day I get a call on my answering machine asking me to call them back about a recent Macy’s purchase.  At this point, stop and ask yourself, why in the world would Macy’s need to call you about an Email Gift Card order that was supposed to already be out and resting in the recipient’s email box?

The lady on the answering machine tells me I need to call a number (18662828977 – Mason, Ohio) and give them my order confirmation number.  The lady spoke so fast I literally had to play back the message 3 times (for both order # and phone #) to make sure I had it.  I’ve never heard any customer service rep for a company have such little disregard when giving a number.

Then I call the number and some guy answers and asks me for my name, phone number, address, confirmation number (don’t remember the order) and then asks me for the security number on the credit card.  Ok, hold on just one f’ing second.  Why in the hell do I need to give out all this personal information when I’ve already given it to the Macys.com website?

When the customer service guy asked for the security number, I balked.  This is exactly the type of sh!t (I’m only censoring this to make sure Google doesn’t ignore my post for language) your supposed to watch out for.  People wanting you to open up your entire vault of personal information to verify something that doesn’t need to be really verified.

Again, look at the situation.  I placed a successful order online at Macys.com (or at least that’s what it told me).  The next day I get a call saying to call them back.  I call back the number and all of a sudden, I’m asked to dump loads of personal information on a purchase I’ve already made and provided the transaction number for.  What, was the order number not good enough?  Was my name in addition to the order not good enough?  Was someone going to call them back with the private number they gave (it’s not on their Macys.com website) and then subsequently give the correct order confirmation number, name, address, and phone number they ordered with to somehow hack into my order and send someone else my gift card email?  I was irate.

I’m mad at myself for actually giving any info beyond my name.  As the whole thing played out, it started getting more and more ridiculous and by the time he got to the credit card, I knew it was all over.  The guy was nice enough, but then again scammers many times are nice so that’s pretty inconsequential.  When the customer service rep or whatever he was asked for the security code on my credit card, I said, you know what, I’m done, just cancel the order.  This was supposed to go out on someone’s birthday and now I’m sitting here spending my valuable time giving out all my personal information just to confirm the damn order of what was advertised to be an easy email gift card.

I tried to go in and buy a latte and ended up going to a scam carnival set up in front of a three ring circus.

After I hung up the phone, I started getting weary of what just went down.  First, someone calls me and leaves a sorely unprofessional message on my home answering machine.  Then, I call the number I was given back and I’m asked to unnecessarily give out or “confirm” all my personal data.  What in the hell is going on?

So now I have to call Macy’s directly and make sure I haven’t been the victim of some online scam.  I’m not saying Macy’s tried to scam me.  I’m just saying my total shopping experience at Macy’s online sucked and I’ll never buy anything from them again.  What I am saying is that my information could have easily been scraped by some hacker that’s now pretending to be a Macy’s call center and is calling me back.  After all, Macys.com doesn’t have the number 1866-282-8977 listed on their website and the discussions I saw on 800notes.com from people that had received calls from this phone number were on shaky grounds.

Some people had never placed an order, one person said Macy’s said they never ask for credit card info, another person referred to the situation as “unprofessional” and “highly dubious”, another person wrote they asked her for her “Macy’s account numer and social security number”, and on and on.  Read the comments here.  Reading these user comments on the phone number was very suspicious and did not ease my doubts at all.  I was not at all comfortable with what was going on.

After this, I went to Macys.com and called one of their customer service numbers.  It wasn’t that easy to find one for the division I was looking for.  I called one number and it was purely automated.  After wasting a few minutes on that, I got “lucky” and reached a person.  A person with a thick Middle Eastern accent that was hard to understand and just kept repeating, “I apologize for your inconvenience…”

On this note, let me tell any of you companies out there that I hate customer service reps apologizing for my inconvenience.  That doesn’t resolve anything!  It just wastes more of my time!  It wasn’t the guy’s fault either – he’s just doing what the idiot higher ups tell him to do – but it still pissed me off.  He’s not at all connected to the situation.  It wasn’t his fault.  He’s not vested in the matter so his apology is completely immaterial.  And last, his apology does nothing for me other than lose me time.

Anyways, after listening to about 4 or 5 apologizing for my inconveniences, I cut him off and say look, I’m worried there might be online fraud with my information being scraped off the Macys website.  After awhile of putting my on hold, he sent me to a native English speaker.  He asked me a few of the basic personal information questions (phone, name, address) but when he got to email address, I started boiling.  I cut him off and questioned the need for my email address, especially given my situation.  I said something like, I’m already wondering if I just got scammed and now you’re asking for my email address after getting all my other pertinent information.  What do you even need my email for?

The rep got the picture pretty fast after I told him my exact concerns and labeled myself as “pretty irate right now”.  He put me on hold for literally 15-20 minutes and finally confirmed that the order was cancelled and the people that called were indeed calling on behalf of Macys.  I thanked him very much – it’s not his fault Macy’s policies have no regard for customer data privacy.  As I said, there was a long wait, but I figure they turned the recorder on or had a long pow-wow with the managers to make sure what the right things to say were.

So there you have it, a 1 hour production all just to make sure that I didn’t just become a victim of online fraud.  It was supposed to be a nice, simple birthday gift card delivered to my girlfriend’s email address on her birthday. I didn’t want the process to take any longer than 3 minutes to place my order.

And now, after the tutorial on how not to operate a business, I still have lingering doubts about the place that called me from Mason, Ohio asking for my credit card security code.  Why would they need that?  It makes absolutely no sense.  They did already have my name and phone number for sure though so giving that up was no big deal.  They already had a good start to the information rolodex and I’m sure from there they could have easily got my address.

I’ve spent about 45 minutes writing this post, but I wanted to give a public service announcement and warn about the Macy’s e-gift card and their subsequent phone calls.  The calls showed complete disregard for any customer information privacy.  And if they want to defend themselves and say there’s been a lot of fraud going on with the email gift cards, then I say, “STOP FVCKING SELLING THEM!”

I asked the first guy I talked (the number I was given and told to call back) why I had to confirm my order and he said there had been a lot of fraud and so they had to confirm some of the orders.  I asked him if that meant all orders and he said yes.  If that’s the case then Macy’s needs to damn well put that on their website because it’s extremely misleading to anyone buying an email gift card that you would have to confirm that gift card purchase over the phone for it to go through.  They do say it might take up to 24 hours but there’s nothing that you will see outside the fine print that says you need to confirm.

I want everyone to know the story.  I went to Macys.com because I thought it was a nice, convenient, upscale store where I wouldn’t have to worry about any bullshit games.  I found out they’re working on a chewing gum auto repair kit scale.  After the whole experience, I felt like I went to some fly-by-night mechanic shop.

I will never shop at Macys.com again.  I will never shop at Macy’s again.

Questions Answered:

Should I Buy the Macy’s E-gift card?

Macy’s E-gift card review, Macy’s Email gift card reviews

Also check out this blogger’s experience with the Macy’s e-gift card (sans the worrying about fraud part).

http://www.homebb.com