Cardswap.ca
reviews and complaints

I recently tried out Cardswap.ca and had quite the experience. So, I went ahead and asked for a quote from them. Once I got the offer, I accepted it without any hesitation. Then, I asked them what else I needed to send along with the gift card. Surprisingly, they told me that I only needed to send the gift card itself and the confirmation number. Simple enough, right?

I gathered up my cards and mailed them off to Cardswap.ca. But guess what? They came back to me and asked for the receipts. I was a bit confused because they initially said I didn't need anything else. Nevertheless, I sent them the receipts as requested. I thought that would be the end of it, but boy was I wrong!

A week later, they contacted me again and asked for the previous receipt. This time, it was the receipt of purchase. Now, my card was actually from a refund, so I didn't have a purchase receipt. But I didn't want to give up just yet, so I reached out to them and asked if there was anything else they needed. They assured me that there wasn't.

However, another week passed and they asked me to send a photocopy of my ID. Can you believe it? They even wanted a photocopy of the credit card I used for the purchase. I wasn't born yesterday, so I knew better than to fall for that trick again. It seemed like no matter what I gave them, they would keep asking for more. And honestly, I didn't feel comfortable sharing so much personal information with them.

Overall, my experience with Cardswap.ca was quite frustrating. The constant back-and-forth and the never-ending requests for additional documents made me question their credibility. I understand the need for security, but it felt like they were going a bit overboard. I'm not sure if I'll be using their services again in the future.

I'm writing this review because I'm really disappointed with CardSwap. They're not a scam, they seem legit, but it's their process and the people behind it that are very unprofessional. The customer service is below any applicable standards. This company gives me the vibe of a cheap startup that is having a hard time making good deals. Let me explain what I mean.

I had a high-value gift card from Apple. Like anyone would, I went on their website, passed their evaluation, and was offered 85% of the card amount, which was supposed to leave them with a pretty good profit of 15%. I accepted the offer and followed their instructions to the letter. And that's when the problems started. When I went to the post office to send my card, the officer informed me that the ZIP code of the address they provided is invalid. Now, here's what I think, this business, the way they run it, involves a lot of trust being put in the company initially. You need to send them your card with no guarantee whatsoever of what's going to happen next. All you can work with to raise your confidence level is one positive testimonial on their website (and I'm yet to see a website owner publishing a bad review about their activity!) and some scarce reviews online. Yet, just when you're ready to make your leap of faith, something as stupid as an invalid ZIP code doesn't play well with your level of confidence. That was just the first warning sign.

Then they received the card and confirmed it, explicitly telling me that they'll send me the check in the next 2-3 business days. Needless to say, that didn't happen. I started to feel like I've been scammed, but I decided to be patient and waited for a week before sending an inquiry to their customer service. Again, this is just my opinion, but I believe that when you, as a company, are asking for trust without having proven yourself in any way, the least you should do is deliver on your promises. Instead, I received an email in which, without any excuse, they asked me if I had the original receipt for the gift card. And this upset me really bad. Nowhere in the process, not during the evaluation when they knew the amount of my gift card, nor later, when they gave me instructions on what to send with the card, was the original receipt mentioned. It doesn't even make sense that the receiver of a gift card would have the original receipt because, guess what, it's a gift card! Nobody gives gifts with the receipts attached to them! This company's business is gift cards, and yet they're assuming that my card isn't gifted, but somehow I decided to buy it for myself and then offer it to them just so I can lose 15% of its amount?! When I asked them this same question, they told me that this is part of their verification procedures, which again, was not published anywhere. Moreover, I couldn't easily swallow the fact that I wasn't asked about the receipt immediately after they received the card. They stalled and waited for me to start sending emails to ask for it. I felt like they were just inventing procedures and excuses not to deliver on their commitment. Even so, I explained to them that the card was gifted to me by my company and since this was all around Christmas (delay caused by them!), I would need a few days until business resumes to ask for the original receipt. They didn't answer to that to confirm or deny, it seems that I just didn't deserve that much attention at that point. I was pretty confident I could get the receipt, although my brain was screaming at me that this isn't right since if I had been told from the beginning that they needed it, I wouldn't have wasted so much time and effort. The moment business resumed, without waiting for me to get the receipt, they sent me another email informing me that they'll return my card because it was missing required documents. They did return my card and I checked it on the Apple site. The amount was still there.

Now, this is how I'm reading their behavior: this is a company that deals mostly in the range of $50 to $200 card values. My card was for $500. Once they received it, they got scared that they wouldn't be able to sell it. Well, they should have realized that from the beginning and refused it with an explanation before I invested effort and money into sending it. Instead, they decided to play possum and started looking for reasons and inventing requirements just so they could get out of the situation clean, which I find very unethical. When they ask you to send the card with a registered email, they tell you that they'll reimburse your expenses up to $10. That was a lie too. They didn't reimburse me, they sent me a coupon for $5 that I'm supposed to use when I send them cards in the future. Very smart, sending me a coupon for services they made sure I'll never use...

So this is the aftermath of my transaction that didn't happen. This company made me waste time and money, and in the end, nothing they did was worth it. They're cheap and they would lie to you so that they can get away with it legally. Their customer service is unethical and unprofessional. I'll leave it up to you to decide if you'll ever use their services.

UPDATE: 2 months later, I decided to delete my account with them and that's when my issues started again. Unlike most self-respecting companies that offer an option to their customers to delete their accounts on the website itself, so their time isn't wasted in stupid email conversations, CardSwap requires you to contact them and you also need to somehow intuit it. They don't bother to explain what the procedure is anywhere. So I submitted a form with the request to delete my account. They sent me an email a day later saying that they deleted it. I still had my profile open from the previous day, so I went and checked if it's deleted. And, of course, my profile was still there, the only difference I noticed was that they prefixed my email with 'xxx_'. My profile was still accessible with the new prefixed email, nothing was deleted. I asked them again to delete it, this time I also asked them to remove my data from their database. I just don't feel safe with my names, address, phone number, and email (now prefixed, but still pretty readable) sitting in their database, which can be breached at any point in time. They insisted they deleted it this time. Of course, they hadn't. I was still able to log in and see all my data. I attached screenshots and repeated my request. I also asked them to pass my request to someone who has at least a basic idea of how accounts work. This time I'm not going to wait for their reply, I'll just replace all data in my account with garbage. It seems that you can't even get rid of them...

Beware, customers, your data may not be safe at all with CardSwap, and due to their incompetence, it's not trivial to delete it.