Gift Certificate Coupons

I have Gift Certificates and I would like to offer a discount code on them as an incentive for buying them early for the holidays.

Because the cart considers it a downloadable product, I set the restrictions for the individual products.

However, it won't work. If I take off any product or category restrictions, works just fine.

Any ideas?

I want to avoid just putting a sale price on the coupons. Make it an offer for my mailing list customers than just every casual store visitor.

Ok after more research I see that Gift Certificates are automatically excluded from discounts. How can I edit that so they can be included?

WARNING: We strongly recommend that you do NOT allow Discount Coupons on Gift Certificates nor allow Gift Certificates to purchase Gift Certificates as you can work into a situation where you give away the store ...

This function in the functions_general.php manages the validation:

  function is_product_valid($product_id, $coupon_id) {
    global $db;
    $coupons_query = "SELECT * FROM " . TABLE_COUPON_RESTRICT . "
                      WHERE coupon_id = '" . (int)$coupon_id . "'
                      ORDER BY coupon_restrict ASC";

    $coupons = $db->Execute($coupons_query);

    $product_query = "SELECT products_model FROM " . TABLE_PRODUCTS . "
                      WHERE products_id = '" . (int)$product_id . "'";

    $product = $db->Execute($product_query);

    if (ereg('^GIFT', $product->fields['products_model'])) {
      return false;
    }

You would need to properly customize this and really test this as people will buy the Gift Certificate on a discount coupon then send the Gift Certificate to a friend then buy Gift Certificates with the Discounted Gift Certificate with the Discount Coupon ... :eek:

Thank you for the input! Much appreciated.

If I understand your reply, then you are suggesting not to try and combine actual gifts certificates with the GV feature of ZC.
Is the best way then just to offer them as an item for sale in the cart itself? This would mean that the only way to use this card is for the person to call with the card # and make it a "manual" transaction or is there a better way?

I recently started to offer "Gift Cards" in different values and am looking for a way to implement them so the process would be as automated as possible. They are available in $10, $25 and $50.

Any input would be appreciated.

Zen Cart offers both Gift Certificates and Discount Coupons ...

The caution is to not attempt to use Discount Coupons to buy Gift Certificates or Gift Certificates to buy Gift Certificates ...

By default, doing such is disabled as you will get people who with buy Gift Certificates with a Discount Coupon then send that to a friend to buy more with the Gift Certificate with the Discount Coupon and it will continue to cycle to a point where you are paying someone to buy your merchandise ...

Would it be better then to do what I have currently setup, just sell the Gift Certificates as items?

You have Gift Certificates that you want to sell ...

You have Discount Coupons that you want to give out ...

If you keep the two separate then that prevents the problem ...

Discount Coupons, Sales and Specials are all setup to not allow use with Gift Certificates ...

If you want to change how things work, either by changing the validations or by creating Gift Certificates as regular Products that you manually apply to an account then you will need to full test this and ensure that someone working with multiple emails or friends cannot utilize anything that you are doing to make 2-12 purchases in some combination to result in you paying another person by giving them more in the way of Discount Coupons or Gift Certificates than what is intended ...

Hi Ajeh,

I want to be able to sell Gift Certificates and offer Coupons—both are currently set up and work fine.

However, I want to be able to offer or sell Gift Certificates that aren't transferable—for example I want to give a $10 gift certificate to a group of people and my goal is that they will use them to purchase something (I don't want them to transfer them all to one person who could then buy tons of things without spending REAL money—which they could do with gift certificates)

So my solution is to sell discount coupons **AS ** special Gift Certificates (not the actual real gift certificates-which is part of Zen Cart Gift Certificates) , restrict what they can use them for (for example don't let them buy actual gift certificates) and also have them expire.
I can set them for one use by ANY customer so they can give them as gifts to other people. A customer shouldn't be able to tell the difference on their end—I also plan on including in the gift Certificate FAQ a note about these Special Gift Certificates.

Does this make sense? Is there an easier way? Is there something I'm not considering?

—all thoughts by anyone welcome!

Thanks!

—Feenx

Zen Cart is not designed to prevent people from sending their GV balance to someone else ...

Perhaps it would be better to send them a Discount Coupon instead that is only good for 1 person ...

But then, whoever owns the Discount Coupon code and uses it first wins ...

So there really isn't anything built in, by default, for this ...

You might be able to write something that tests the Discount Coupon code and make it where Discount Coupons that start with:
fredsomething

only can be used by the person the Discount Coupon was sent to ...

Thank you! I actually like the functionality of being able to give and receive Gift Certificate values—but not if I'm giving them as gifts.

Maybe this is all a matter of semantics. If I issue a coupon with a specific value, restrict it to one time use, but call it a "gift certificate" it will look and act like a coupon, but not be classified (or act like) by Zen Cart as a Gift Certificate—but still yield the desired effect.

For example: I gave a coupon to a friend for their birthday with a value for an item, I restricted it to one use, restricted the items it could be for, but made a fancy paper gift certificate.

The person doesn't see it as a coupon. It won't show up on their account as a balance, and they can't transfer it to another customer, and I can have it expire.

Am I being logical—does this make sense and will it serve my purpose?

Thanks again!

—Feenx

But they could call Fred and say "Hey Fred, here is a Discount Coupon that I am not going to use ... feel free!"

Other than that ... it will be limited to the customer that you issued the Discount Coupon to ...

However, now the customer needs to know to use the Discount Coupon Redeem and not GV Redeem ...

You could label the Discount Coupons as **Discount Coupons and Eagle Stamps ** and call your special coupons Eagle Stamps ... :smile:

Thank you!

That's the basic idea!

—Feenx:smile: