Just a heads up. My wife bought a $100 QVC gift card for her mother's birthday. When she tried to use it there was a no money on the card.
There's a scam going on where thieves steal a gift card, copy the numbers, reseal the card and put it back on the rack. The unsuspecting purchaser of the card then goes to use it and there's no money on the card.
Publix told my wife that they will put a tracer on the card. But my guess is the card was stolen and drained of the $100. Hopefully I'm wrong, but it sounds like this is what most likely happened.
Here's an article more about it.
https://www.today.com/money/gift-card-draining-scam-rcna130569
"What is gift card draining? How to avoid being a victim of this simple but popular scam."
"Weekend TODAY anchor and senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett is a recent victim of the scheme. She bought $2,000 worth of Vanilla Visa gift cards at a CVS in New York City only to discover that three of the cards had scuff marks in the spot where the security code is meant to be and that the money was drained.
“All of the seals look totally fine,” Laura said in a TODAY story that aired Dec. 20. “In fact, it says on here if tamper evident, don’t purchase, so I checked it before I checked out. Everything looked good from the outside.”