Voucher large Buyagift has 8,000 sad clients: TONY HETHERINGTON investigates

Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday’s ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below. 

Mrs W.E. writes: Buyagift has taken £200 from my banked vouchers. There is no way of contacting anyone except online and they are not answering. 

We have saved these gift vouchers so my 81-year-old husband and I can have a few days away. 

I don’t know where to turn if Buyagift won’t even speak to me.

Tony Hetherington replies: Buyagift is an online voucher company. Short of ideas for Christmas? Give friends a voucher they can spend on a host of things such as restaurant meals, spa days, or a hot air balloon trip. 

Can’t think what to give a family member for that big birthday? A Buyagift voucher can put them at the controls of a Spitfire.

That’s if all goes well, of course. And on the face of it, there is no reason to worry. Buyagift is run by Experience More Limited, part of the Moonpig greetings card group.

 Yet £200 in vouchers you had saved simply disappeared from your account without explanation.

When you tried to resolve this through Buyagift’s online chat service, you were firstly cut off and then you were told nothing could be done. You also threatened to report the matter to the police as a theft.

I then found for myself what you had been up against. Buyagift’s website offers no phone number or email and it warns: ‘We aren’t able to respond to letters sent via post.’

There is a ‘contact us’ page but this simply offers access to Buyagift’s own list of Frequently Asked Questions. If a subject is not there, the customer’s question is pointless.

There is a chatbot, but however I tried to pose my questions, I was met with a question in response.

Did I have a Buyagift voucher already? No, I didn’t. Did I want to buy a voucher? No, I didn’t. Since I had no vouchers and planned to buy no vouchers, the chatbot was not interested in anything I said.

Bizarrely, the customer service page then asked: ‘Was this article helpful?’ On the day I tried to use it, a footnote announced: ‘916 out of 8,960 found this helpful.’ So more than 8,000 people tried to get sense out of Buyagift’s FAQs and chatbot, and they got nowhere!

However, 24 hours after you threatened to call the police, a Buyagift customer services agent messaged you, saying: ‘Our mission is to deliver happiness, and I can see that we have fallen short on this occasion’. He gave his email address, which let me ask for details of his firm’s press spokesperson.

And to my surprise, he responded.

I wish I could say that this was a genuine turning point but Buyagift could put the mafia’s code of silence to shame. I set out all the details of your complaint, and I added my own question about why Buyagift made it so hard to contact them.

Despite a further nudge a week later, Buyagift has failed to offer any comment or answer questions.

I also wanted to ask the firm about a check I made on court records, which turned up a couple of judgments against it that are listed as ‘unsatisfied’. 

This means either that the company did not settle its debts promptly or it could mean that it never paid up at all.

There is a happy ending for you, though. Despite failing to come up with any explanation, the customer services staffer made good on your vanished vouchers.

 You told me: ‘Thank you so much for your fast intervention which prompted a highly satisfactory response.’

A good outcome but there is no reason to believe exactly the same problem will not happen again.

If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 9 Derry Street, London W8 5HY or email tony.hetherington@mailonsunday.co.uk. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.