<p>Too bad you can’t bill her for the balance due! :D</p>
<p>someone may have said this, but if I had been the gift card giver and thought I’d mixed them up, I would check the balance on the remaining one or asked the person I had given it to to check it - if her intent was to give the other person 15 bux, they would likely be a little freaked to receive 100.00. Of course, I wouldn’t request the 100.00 back, but would know to get another for my client immediately. The 15 sounds like a gift card for a kid!</p>
<p>OR the agent was full of BS and only had $15 cards - and she’s a weirdo. Why would you ever buy a 15 dollar gift card to a restaurant???</p>
<p>In our state, gift cards are not allowed to lose value or expire. It’s a state law. Ive used gift cards that were years old with no issues.</p>
<p>I will say, if I knew anyone else using this agent, I would kindly warn them that they should check the balance on any gift card before they place the order at the restaurant (assuming she gives the same gift).</p>
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<p>LasMa, I’m not fretting. More amused than anything else.</p>
<p>I think it is usually a good idea to assume good intentions, so I wouldn’t let some of the elaborate schemes suggested above pollute my mind if I could help it. 
She sounds like a bit of a ditz, who could easily have screwed up such a thing.</p>
<p>I’d take the stance that this resulted in your discovering a great new restaurant and having a delicious meal. Since the gift card was a thank you, you don’t need to specifically thank her for it again. If, and only if, she asks whether you got the right card, I’d say that it was for $15, but you had a wonderful meal and discovered a new restaurant and she really shouldn’t worry about it. (If she has her wits about her she would send you another gift of some sort, but it sounds like she doesn’t. )</p>
<p>The agent did tell VH to check the card and let her know if it wasn’t the right amount. That’s really the major thing she did wrong. </p>
<p>However, I can easily envision how the cards could have been mixed up in the first place. For example, a grateful client or a referee colleague gave the agent a $100 gift card and the agent used it to go out to dinner herself (leaving $15 balance). Agent liked the restaurant enough to buy a gift card for her client, and mixed up the two. Or, agent bought two gift cards originally intended for clients, used one herself instead, then mixed them up.</p>
<p>Much stranger things have happened. I find it more far fetched that she’d go through some convoluted plan to say there might be a mix up, in the hopes that the OP wouldn’t do anything about it. More likely she’s just the disorganized type.</p>
<p>As for the gift taking so long to appear, many months after we moved in to our home we received a beautiful throw from our agent. The timing of this gift card seemed intentional to coincide with Christmas, though I can see how you might have thought she was sending something that day or shortly thereafter by her question on moving day. From a marketing perspective I know our agent likes to keep his name in front of us from time to time. A gift several months later is just a nice surprise and a reminder to refer your friends.</p>
<p>“Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.”</p>
<p>Hanlon’s Razor.</p>
<p>roshke–swiping the card at the table means you don’t have to wonder where your card went. Probably good for the restaurant too.
Our organization sells gift cards and once there was a big mix-up (on part of the supplier) where 100 dollar cards had only 25 dollars on them. Fortunately all the numbers were able to be tracked easily and corrected. Just a warning to check balances and record numbers.
Fortunately in our state the cards don’t expire, but remembering to use them is another thing</p>
<p>Hanlon’s Razor.</p>
<p>[Or</a> Napoleon](<a href=“http://www.webcitation.org/5kwqT8DBL]Or”>http://www.webcitation.org/5kwqT8DBL)</p>
<p>( as opposed to * Harlan’s Razor* which could be " It was in the glass, not the jar".)</p>
<p>There is something very fishy about this story. Maybe the realtor is getting a kickback from the restaurant or something. I hate gift cards for precisely this reason. Did you tell the waiter that you didn’t know how much the gift card was worth? Maybe he stole the $85. I think you got scammed by someone, either because you got induced to spend money at a restaurant you otherwise wouldn’t have gone to or because the restaurant stole from you once you said you didn’t know how much the card was worth. But it is not worth trying to resolve it.</p>
<p>nottelling–really not worth the angst.</p>
<p>If this agent was that disorganized, would she be an effective agent?</p>
<p>If OP could say that the agent was often mixing up appts and such during the home sale, then she likely wouldn’t need to ask the question here - she would know the answer - ah, that chick was such a ditz anyway.</p>
<p>Not any sort of convoluted planning needed to misrepresent a $15 card as a $100 one, just a need to impress, and an impulsive person who spews out whatever she needs to say at the time to make herself look good. The key is the fact that she went out of her way to explain the mix-up ahead of time. You’ve never met anyone like that? I’ve met more people like that than successful business people who would mix up the two cards. Mix up a $15 and a $25 card? Sure. But to believe that a business person who deals in houses worth half a million dollars can’t keep two gift cards straight, or who doesn’t have a competent assistant who’ll keep them straight for her? Nope. </p>
<p>One of the wealthiest realtors I know has ADHD, and is a total ditz about some things. HOWEVER, she has hired people to deal with the stuff that trips her up. Like gift cards.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t make an issue of it either way. A gift is a gift. But I don’t believe the story, either.</p>
<p>I’d like to decree a new rule of etiquette that should hereafter be followed by everyone: if someone gives you a gift card with a represented value, and the gift card turns out to be worth less the represented value, you (the recipient) must immediately tell the giver, no matter how awkward. Otherwise, there is just too much incentive for fraud or negligence by the seller. Wouldn’t you want to know if you spent $100 bucks on a gift card but the recipient was told it was worth only $50? In this situation the giver (the realtor) was too squirrelly to follow up with, but with a friend I’ve now decided that I will speak up if this happens ( assuming there is no squirrelly disclaimer when the card is presented).</p>
<p>Yay for Justified.</p>
<p>But, seriously. 2 things. One, as she specifically said to let her know if it was the wrong intended amount, I would let her know, but like this. “Because you asked, I checked the value of the card and it was $15.” Put the ball back in her court. She might send you another card.</p>
<p>Second, once she said the value was intended to be, but might not be 100, go online to look up the value (which is what the realtor should have done). If they are big enough to have gift cards, there is a way to verify the amount.</p>
<p>Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using CC</p>
<p>Okay, I’ve changed my mind; I don’t necessarily think there is something fishy going on. </p>
<p>I just remembered something that happened to me that changes my thinking. I usually don’t buy gift cards, but a couple of years ago my sister specifically asked for a gift card, and I drew someone’s name in a gift exchange that I didn’t know well. I asked her close friend what she might want, and the friend told me she liked gift cards. </p>
<p>So, I bought two Nordstrom’s gift cards: $250 for my sister, and $35 for the gift exchange (which was the stated gift exchange limit/amount). After Christmas, I got a thank you note from the gift exchange recipient thanking me for the GENEROUS gift with GENEROUS underlined several times. Since it was a $35 gift exchange, the effusiveness of the “thank you” was totally disproportionate to the gift.</p>
<p>Of course, I immediately called my sister and told her to let me know if the gift card was for $35 and not $250. My sister’s gift card was for the right amount, but I’m firmly convinced that the gift exchange recipient got a card worth more than the $35 I had paid for it. </p>
<p>So, maybe this realtor is not a ditz, not a scammer, not disorganized, but maybe the person selling the cards swapped them by mistake. Maybe the recipient of the first card thanked her in an overly effusive way. Or maybe the seller seemed disorganized when selling it, which made her worried that the seller had mixed them up. In that case, I could definitely see her saying, “Let me know if this is the wrong amount.” </p>
<p>She probably should have checked the second card before sending it, but for whatever reason she didn’t, and now she’s kicking herself for it. In this scenario, it would be a kindness to tell her, to give her the chance to correct the mistake. It’s better than writing her off as a ditz! Or harboring suspicions (like I originally suggested) that there is something fishy going on. </p>
<p>Just email her back and say, “Loved the restaurant. You asked us to let you know if the gift card value was less than $100; it was $15. But we really appreciated the gift and especially being turned on to a fabulous restaurant in our new neighborhood.”</p>
<p>Don’t you hate it when someone gives you a gift, and then asks you to do all the work they couldn’t be bothered with doing?</p>
<p>Like checking to see if the gift was for the right amount?</p>
<p>nottelling: I like the way you phrased that. I’m still considering what to do. That phrasing is very helpful.</p>
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<p>She was not terribly effective.</p>
<p>The house went on the market right before Mother’s Day. She warned me there would be no showings that weekend because of the holiday. Instead, there were three.</p>
<p>Of all the showings we had (30 or so), she was responsible for bringing none of them to the house!</p>
<p>She made a really tasteless racial “joke” once when she was showing me a prospective house for us to buy.</p>
<p>The buyers of our old house are of a different ethnicity than we are. Once we had an agreed-upon price with them, she warned us that “those people” can be difficult to deal with.</p>
<p>Lots of things about this woman I didn’t like.</p>
<p>I could understand not remembering the amount on a gift card. Heck, I bought several Starbucks cards last fall, planning to give them away, didn’t get around to it. Then, a friend’s mom got sick, so thought I’d send her one. But, I went back to the store and checked the amount – it’s not that hard to do. And if I were a business person, no way would I send out a card to a client not knowing the amount it was worth. Maybe if it were a spur of the moment gift to a family member (one of my kids), LOL.</p>