Did you buy a gift card from them? Did it work and how long did it take to get the card?

I think cake wallet has rather good reputation in monero community, so I decided to try the cakepay to buy a gift card. So far the experience was quite awful - I either got scammed or their service/support is terrible. My gift card was paid for more than a week ago - but I still haven’t received it. Timeline:

  • Dec 27 - paid monerojis for a gift card - the payment went through but the order indicates that there was some problem with the payment and I need to contact them by email with order id to resolve it (which I did at the same day). I receive a standard “Request received” email and that’s it.
  • Dec 29 - I write a comment under their advertisement post here on monero.town, where I tag the author of the post @vikrantnyc@monero.town and ask about the situation - it still has no answer as of today (Jan 4).
  • Dec 31 - finally (after 4 days!) I receive answer from their support where they basically tell me that indeed the problem was on their end, and I “should be receiving an email with the gift card details shortly”.
  • Jan 2 - I write another email saying I still haven’t got the gift card.
  • Jan 4 (today) - no response and no gift card.

Honestly, even if it gets resolved I’m quite unlikely to use their services again… Curious to hear what experience other folks had with cakepay…

Some screenshots/proofs under a spoiler:

screenshots

  • VikXMR@monero.townEnglish
    61·
    6 months ago

    HI… Sorry to hear this. I don’t check monero.town often. Can you send me your order number or forward me the email that you sent to support? vik@cakewallet.com. I’ll make sure you are refunded asap. Your experience is not the norm, as we sell 10s of thousands in $$ of cards a day with no issues. Please let me know if you want the cards or the refund. Again, my personal apologies to you.

    • lltnskyc@monero.townOP
      4·
      6 months ago

      Sent you an email. I would still prefer a gift card.

      I think it would also be cool if you could make a post/comment explaining what exactly went wrong with my order and what was/will be done to make sure it will not happen again in the future to regain trust of myself and others reading this post in the future, but it is up to you obviously.

    • lltnskyc@monero.townOP
      1·
      6 months ago

      2 days later (or 10+ days after making the purchase) - no gift card, no (new) response from cake support, no answer from vik to my email. :/

  • lltnskyc@monero.townOP
    5·
    6 months ago

    Okay, so it finally has been resolved (Jan 8).

    I got a refund, actually 2x of what I paid for the gift card as a compensation “for the time wasted”, after speaking with Vik on Matrix.

    The problem cited was “I guess our provider had some availability issues”. So I wasn’t scammed, and even earned some money in the end I guess.

  • chaser@monero.town
    4·
    6 months ago

    heads up about the screenshots – when you need to obscure text (or anything else) on a picture, don’t use blurring, pixelization or similar effects. they can be brute-forced and the original text can be retrieved, with trivial computing power. always use color fill to obscure data, and don’t make it exactly as big as the data is (~visual padding).

    • lltnskyc@monero.townOP
      3·
      6 months ago

      Thanks!

      I knew this and chose to use blurring anyway because there’s nothing too important, at most someone will “de-blur” my email, which is one of many so it doesn’t matter much.

      But this is definitely good advice for others who may have really sensitive info that needs to be obscured!

  • Saki@monero.townEnglish
    3·
    6 months ago

    According to @azalty@monero.town, Cake Pay works fine if you’re fine with KYC, and otherwise you may just lose your money: https://monero.town/post/872283

    If you’re a privacy advocate not fully supporting KYC but want to try this anyway, then try a small amount, because you may lose all your money. Another recent option is more privacy-friendly and KYC-free, but the fees are higher with them.

    • azalty@monero.town
      2·
      2 months ago

      @azalty@jlai.lu actually, but I own both accounts :)

      I didn’t send my ID so I wasn’t able to get what I paid for. Can’t say for sure that it works fine if you do send it, but I assume it would. Avoid anyways, not worth it to send your ID and stuff to shady companies.

  • prancing389@monero.town
    2·
    5 months ago

    Cakepay stole my money. I purchased a Mastercard, it accepted my Monero from my private wallet and forwarded me to an outside organization to complete the transaction. The card failed everywhere I’ve tried it, engaged in numerous correspondence to both Cakepay and the second organization that issued card in order to solve issue, all of which were unsuccessful. I requested a refund, DENIED by both vendors. I requested they switch out card balance for Amazon Gift Card, DENIED. NEVER, ever do business with Cakepay again. Cake Wallet is a decent wallet, but CakePay should be avoided.

  • shortwavesurfer@monero.townEnglish
    12·
    6 months ago

    Oh wow, I have never heard of this happening. My experiences with them have been quite good. So, I’m a little surprised.

    • VikXMR@monero.townEnglish
      4·
      6 months ago

      Yeah this experience is not the norm for Cake Pay. However, trying to find out what happened so we can avoid this in the future.

    • lltnskyc@monero.townOP
      2·
      6 months ago

      Okay glad to hear that you had positive experience with them, thanks. Maybe it’s so slow due to holidays and will get resolved in the end, but it’s not a good customer service :(