Will Disabling Gift Certificates Affect My Current Customers?

[Jac Web]

We have an older Zen Cart store with the latest patches for that version. It has the GV option currently enabled and some customers have already bought Gift Certificates. But because of the confusing process, the store just gave them physical gift cards instead of relying on Zen Cart. There have been too many headaches with the online GV, and therefore the owner just wants to get rid of it. But we also need to Void or Disable the pending gift certificates in customer accounts, to be sure they aren't getting double money (they already got physical gift cards).

If I go to Order Total > Gift Certificates - and remove the module....will it automatically get rid of any pending and redeemed gift certs? Is there a chance of errors?

I read a lot of threads that were very old about disabling gift certificates through the database (really don't want to do that). - If there is a better way to void someone's GV that would be great.

[Ajeh]

For ones you gave physical Gift Certificate to, you can redeem them yourself to cancel them ...

But do not redeem something that the customer still needs to redeem that they would not be able to without a redemption code as this is CASH and they need a way to redeem that CASH in some manner ...

[Jac Web]

Hi Ajeh,

Part of the problem that initiated this whole question - is that a certain customer already ordered AND redeemed their online gift cert. But they were having too much trouble placing online orders (possibly just users error) so the physical store issued her a gift card. But she still has $100 redeemed and available in her online account. The owner wants to get rid of that. But I have had challenges:

1) I have no way to login to that customer's account - how can we do this and save the admin headaches dealing with unsaavy customers?

2) We don't want to just disable something and cause other errors on the site or confusion for other customers.

3) I cannot redeem this particular customer's GV - she already did it somehow - and it is already showing as redeemed in the GV report.

For ones you gave physical Gift Certificate to, you can redeem them yourself to cancel them ...

But do not redeem something that the customer still needs to redeem that they would not be able to without a redemption code as this is CASH and they need a way to redeem that CASH in some manner ...

[Ajeh]

If you gave a physical Gift Certificate to someone who already redeemed the the GV redemption code and that gace them 100.00 in their customer balance, you would need to go into phpMyAdmin and find the customer balance for this customer and manually change the balance of 100.00 to 0.00 ...

[Jac Web]

Thank you. That is disappointing. I read a lot about something called Master Password or other modules to allow the Admin to access their customer accounts to help with support, etc. Is this no longer an option?

[Ajeh]

Master password would not help you in this case ...

The encrypted Master Password does have a purpose but it does not do everything under the sun, it just lets you login as the customer and do normal customer things but not extraordinary customer things ...

[Jac Web]

Am I incorrect that if someone logs into a customer account (normal customer things) they can just access their gift cert balance and forward it to a friend or use it to buy a gift card? I was going to suggest also that the owner contact this customer and request their password to help them use the gift certificate toward a purchase of a gift card (to cancel all this out). Are you saying Master Password would not give them that kind of ability?

Also - I still do want to know the answer to my original question - if we simply go into Order Total > Gift Certificates and Remove - will that automatically disable all gift certificate CASH in current accounts AND will it cause any weird error messages in the site?

[Ajeh]

Master Password would allow you, the Store owner, to login as if you were that customer ...

You could then send out their Customer Balance to yourself to empty their Customer Balance, provided this is the proper thing to do, meaning, the customer has a way to spend, or give away, their CASH that was in the form of a Gift Certificate ...

Otherwise, to empty the Customer Balance, where appropriate, this would have to be done in phpMyAdmin where you physically set the Customer Balance to 0.00, providing this is appropriate ...

I just tried this and removed the GV ot_gv so far it appears gone from everywhere except the My Account where I can Send GV to someone else ... so I am not sure if there is anyone else, off the top of my head, where I can find a way to use GV customer balance, other than the Send GV to another ...

I do not see it in the checkout_payment ...

Oh there it is in Shopping Cart side box ...

Question is ... is it hiding elsewhere ...

I think I found everywhere but I could be wrong, off the top of my head ...