After Susan Kunz purchased $1,000 in gift cards at a Houston Walmart, she checked to confirm the balance on each card. She was shocked to learn that one of the cards had already been drained.
Later, while investigating the issue, two more cards were drained -- the three cards had been worth a collective $800.
Kunz learned each card was used at a different Walmart location.
“The cards had been only in my possession so the questions was ‘How does this happen?” Kunz said. “And if this is happening to us, who else has this happened to?”
Kunz had planned to gift the cards to several families in need at her church.
“If we had not gotten this figured out we would’ve been handing out cards to our families,” Kunz said. “They would’ve been filling up their baskets with toys and food. They would’ve gotten to the cash register and cards that had been given to them by a church would be empty and that is a terrible thing.”
After Walmart failed to refund her or offer a solution, Kunz filed a police report.
“They don’t know whether this is possibly an inside job or whether it is just a situation where it has to do with people figuring out how to take Walmart cards and even though they do not have them in their possession they are able to use them,” Kunz said. “We don’t know. We have no answers.”
Kunz said she’s determined to get her money back.
“We need our money back,” Kunz said. “We’re going to come up with something different for our families. We’ll be giving money to our families this Sunday. Obviously, we will not be giving them Walmart cards.”
Kunz worries others may be victimized as well.
“We can’t be the only people that are having this problem,” Kunz said. “There are going to be an awful lot of people at Christmas that are going to get their cards, they’re going to go and purchase things, and when they get to the cash register those cards will have no money on them. That is a terrible thing. That is a terrible thing to happen.”
Criticizing Walmart’s muted response, Kunz said that they need to take initiative to figure out what happened and prevent it from happening to others.
“They need to figure out what’s going on,” Kunz said. “In the meantime, I myself would like to see them take every single one of those Walmart cards away from the cash registers so that no one else can use them.”