Orleans woman says $200 gift card for Christmas was empty, tampered with

A $200 gift card turned out to be empty before it was even opened on Christmas Day. As CTV's Katie Griffin reports, gift card fraud is costing Canadians million

An Orléans woman is out $200 and says she got the runaround after purchasing a gift card for Lululemon at Shoppers Drug Mart that had no money on it.

Elsie Tan bought the gift card as a Christmas present at the Shoppers Drug Mart on St. Joseph Boulevard in Orléans on Nov. 8, 2024.

“I said I wanted to buy a Lululemon gift certificate of $200. So, she went to the drawer behind, took the Lululemon card, scanned it like they usually do and paid with my credit card. And they gave me the receipt and I off I go,” Tan said.

Tan said the cashier gave her a card from the drawer behind the cash and not from the gift card rack in the aisles.

When her friend opened the gift card on Christmas, she found it had been tampered with—the material covering the pin number fell off.

“She tried cashing it and they said, ‘no, this card has been cashed.’”

Shoppers Drug Mart told Tan to contact Lululemon. Lululemon said the card had been used on November 18 and 19 and told her to go back to Shoppers Drug Mart for a refund.

Tan said Shoppers told her that because the card had been used there was nothing they could do. A customer support team representative wrote in an e-mail to her that, “this case has been closed and responses to this email will not be received.”

“I just feel that Shoppers should…own up and give me a replacement card,” Tan said.

Canadians lose millions of dollars to gift card fraud every year.

“Somebody will go in, steal the gift cards, bring them home, scratch the security and pin numbers, record them, log in, put a security film back over the pin number so it looks like it’s never been used,” said Det. Shaun Wahbeh with the Ottawa Police Organized Fraud unit. He says criminals then put the card “back in its casing, go back to the store, put it on the shelf. So, when you activate it, you’ve just now alerted them that 200 bucks has gone on and this card is active so then they rush to spend that money before you realize it.”

Lululemon told CTV News Ottawa in a reply after this story was published with a statement encouraging customers to contact the retailer where any tampered gift cards were purchased.

“Our gift cards are available through trusted third-party retailers. In a situation where the gift card is suspected to be fraudulent or tampered with, as standard practice, we recommend guests to report the issue directly to the retailer where the card was purchased for further investigation.”

The day after CTV News reached out to Loblaw, which owns Shoppers Drug Mart, a representative said, “Our store teams are trained to recognize tampering and other fraudulent situations involving gift cards, doing their best to intercept suspicious transactions before purchase.”

It’s offered a $200 Shoppers Drug Mart gift card or 200,000 PC Optimum points.

“I want to thank you and CTV News for taking up my cause and I am very pleased that they have settled with us,” Tan said.

Retail experts say the cost of these scams is widespread.

“It’s been really tough for retailers,” said Bruce Winder. “And the problem with all this is that it goes back into our cost of goods sold right so if you’re a customer, you pay for these things in your retail prices.”