How can I disable gift card email notifications during returns?

[kev911]

I need to turn off email notifications or somehow not send a gift card email when doing some returns.  We have returns from the holidays and when a customer is returning a gift they received and we scan the gift receipt and process the return to a physical gift card the original buyer is receiving an email with the gift card. How do I stop this. Not sure how Shopify has a pos system that would be doing this.

[jules5822]

hi there

I have found out how to do this after some testing 

• Find the order
• Select REFUND
• Select REFUND TO GIFT CARD
• Select NEW GIFT CARD
• Select DIGITAL GIFT CARD
• Select E GIFT CARD
• Under gift card recipient select CHANGE
• Enter the email address of the person wanting the gift card
• Press REFUND
•  Print gift card and receipt (or select email receipt)

[LizConnor]

This is not working right now and I was told by Shopify support that they are aware of the bug, but haven't notified us merchants. I learned the hard way today when we changed the gift card recipient, confirmed visually we had entered the correct info and clicked 'refund'. the gift card was created and the original buyer was emailed. Shopify support did not have a work around, nor any timeline of a fix. We have no idea what to do if a gift is returned. AND, i'm not confident we should use the exchange feature either. I hope Shopify does escalate this. Today's experience was infuriating and embarrassing. 

[jules5822]

Hi Liz

I have just done a test with an exchange treating it as a gift return, I changed the email address to my colleague, she received an email regarding the return, but I did not even though I was the original purchaser.

I will do another test with issuing a gift voucher as a return and let you know what happens 

[LizConnor]

Thank you, yes the issue for us is with the gift card that is issued and who is notified about it.  Looking forward to hear what you experience. Liz

[jules5822]

Ok so i did another test this time issuing a gift voucher for the return and it automatically sent the gift card to the original purchaser as well as the person doing the return - so this is a major problem as both people have the gift card and could use it. I have had to advise my stores to suggest customers only exchange gifts for another item and not a gift card. The only exception to this would be if there is no customer account attached to the original purchase, as there would be no one's details to have an automatic email sent to.

sorry for the bad news - I wonder if shopify will ever fix this issue?!

[LizConnor]

Yes, that's what we experienced and shopify acknowledges that they know of the problem. Wish they had alerted us so we could've stopped using this feature instead of causing rifts between customers without knowing. I would hope Shopify would fix this since the feature was working at one point and it was helpful to have the option to change the gift card recipient's name. 

[LittleEx45]

Does anyone have any updates on this issue? Our system continues to notify original purchasers of gift card issuance during an exchange and Shopify support claims there is a prompt during the POS exchange process that allows us to turn off the notification but that is not the case. The original purchasers are finding out that gift recipients are returning gifts given to them and this is a MAJOR ISSUE for stores. @Shopify why isn’t this fixed??