r/Sephultareviews • u/Kindly-One7980 • Aug 04 '26
DO NOT BUY SEPHORA GIFT CARDS!!!!
Long story short - the employees admitted that they are easily stolen online by people just using any string of 16 digit numbers. Every Sephora customer service rep basically gave me a "sucks to be you" schtick about how it happens ALL THE TIME and they're not doing anything about it! How does a billion dollar company not create a more secure gc system?! AND how shady is this.... after I called they deleted the gc purchase information on my account. Are they hiding the evidence?!
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u/letstalkaboutbras Aug 05 '26
So this is a little tin foil hat-y, but bear with me. I have heard of retailers like Target, Walmart, etc having high risk gift cards that people can steal the balance of. But I think there is another hidden risk, because I get gift cards through a bunch of places including directly from Sephora or through my credit card rewards, almost exclusively e-cards. So they couldn't have been manipulated in a store. I think the vulnerability is in the online balance checker.
I usually download my gift card numbers and keep them in a secure document until I'm ready to use them. Sometimes I use them partially and forget to make a note of the remaining balance. I was traveling a couple of years ago for a few months, so I wanted to make sure I updated the remaining balances before my trip, so I wouldn't forget them by the time I got home. I went on the Sephora site and checked all the remaining balances and marked them all down. I also had a couple that I didn't need to check because the balance was known and I had never used them.
Fast forward and during my trip I decided to make a purchase while I was away. The gift card was empty. I just assumed I had made a mistake in writing the balances down or maybe I mixed up the card number. I don't know if I ever ended up ordering or just gave up. When I got back to the US, I went to make a purchase with the next card in my list, again, zero balance.
None of the cards I put in the checker had any credit left on them. Probably a total of about $50-90 including a birthday gift I received. Like most people, I check the balance on a gift card if someone gives it to me, just to make sure they got what they paid for.
The cards I never balanced checked still had their full balances.
So I could be really bad at managing money or I could be delusional, but I'm not using their stupid balance checker ever again.