A reader called Helen has had quite the time of it trying to use a One4All gift card she was given.

“I originally tried to use a €150 physical card at my local opticians and the transaction was rejected each time,” she writes. “I called One4All’s customer service and they confirmed the balance was correct and present but that they couldn’t see on their system any attempts or transactions on my card,” she writes.

She was offered a range of possible solutions “including fault with the retailer’s terminal or even that the retailer isn’t registered with them; however I was able to confirm that other customers had completed transactions with their One4All gift cards while I was in the shop that day.”

So, One4All agreed to send out a replacement physical card which arrived in the middle of January. “This card was also repeatedly rejected in the opticians when I returned to pay the last part of my bill. I went through the hoops on the phone with the customer services who again suggested that no attempt had been made to use it.”

After that “frustrating conversation” One4All suggested sending out another physical replacement or a digital one which would arrive sooner.

“The digital replacement hadn’t arrived today so I phoned again and was told that digital cards were taking longer than usual to issue – and that I would have been advised of this. I wasn’t. I asked to make a complaint and was told that someone would call me back,” Helen writes.

A UK number later appeared as a missed call but she says she is “certain it just went straight to voicemail. The agent said that they had attempted to call me as requested but that a digital card had now been issued so I possibly no longer need to speak to them.”

So Helen checked and a digital card had just issued. “I went straight back to the opticians – the digital card (now added to my Apple wallet as per instructions) was rejected in the same way as the two previous physical cards,” she says.

[ Unused gift cards deliver millions in profit for One4all companyOpens in new window ]

So she phoned customer services “who again said that no attempts had been made to transact anything on the digital card. I revisited the whole history of the previous and identical problems so the agent said that I should hang up and he would call me back immediately so that I could ‘access my €150 credit in the opticians’. There followed a series of missed calls from a UK number, all of which went directly to voicemail without ringing my phone.”

So Helen tried the Irish customer service number again “and that agent suggested deleting the card from my wallet, uninstalling the app, reinstalling it and then adding the gift card to my wallet again – all of which I did while she remained on the line (at my request). When that didn’t work the agent asked me to take pics of the error messages and provide details of the retailer in an email to their help email address, all of which I have done.”

[ A hotel’s illegal approach to gift vouchers, and a customer left short-changedOpens in new window ]

She says she knows one solution “would be to use another form of payment but I had budgeted over the Christmas period that I would set that gift card aside for paying off my glasses … and now I kind of feel that they should resolve this issue rather than me having to find the money from elsewhere. I’m actually beginning to be upset by how unconcerned the business seems to be about my predicament.”

We got on to One4All to see if we could find out what was going one once and for all.

Before we heard back from them we heard back from Helen to say that a resolution had been reached and the cash had been refunded to her bank account.

We then got a statement from One4All.

“We have investigated Helen’s query with our Customer Services team and can confirm that there was an attempted transaction on the digital card with [a coffee shop] however as they are not on our program, the card was declined,” it began.

“We have since spoken with [the eye clinic] who have confirmed they have accepted multiple One4all Gift Cards in the past week as a card partner on our scheme.

“Helen’s receipt clearly shows her transaction declined in-store on January 15th. On rare occasions, a gift card may not transact for one of many potential reasons. For example, the cashier may have processed it incorrectly as a gift card and not as a debit card; or the card may not be set up as a default payment on a digital gift card; or there may have been connectivity issues with the internet or payment processor and as a prepaid gift card, One4all requires real-time validation. Our Customer Services team have since transferred the full value of her card via EFT and have emailed Helen proof of payment.”