Pinch e-Gift Cards

2 reviews for Pinch e-Gift Cards

1. Rated 4 out of 5

   Jason (verified owner) – January 18, 2025

   I purchased 3 Gift Cards during the Christmas-Holiday Promotion where if you bought a Gift Card for 50/100 you would get an additional Gift Card as an bonus, so this was a personal purchase for myself, and not a purchase for someone else, so some of the features of purchase doesn’t apply to me, such as the included message.

   Upon Order Receipt I was given 4 Gift Card Codes (1 for each of the 3 I purchased, plus 1 for the combined bonuses from the 3 cards). This information was also listed in my orders page so I could access it at any time(But this was not something I knew right away).

   I then decided to use these gift cards to purchase spices a few days later. During the spice purchases I was not only able to apply the gift cards directly to my cart, but apply discounts as well.

   You can also apply multiple gift cards at once in your cart, which means if you go over your total on one gift card you can still apply another gift card so you don’t have to either pay for the rest out of pocket when you have another gift card you could use, or try to make multiple orders to accommodate the multiple gift card’s limits while not having enough to cover the entire order on one(which would then leave leftover money on both cards which you would have pay out of pocket on both cards at TWO later dates with what little is left on them).

   Another interesting thing is it shows you, in the cart, how much you’ve used on the card(s), how much is left on that card, as well as your other cards. For example if you use up all the money on one card it will go to the next card and show you what it’s taking from this card and what is left on the card. There is a lot of information shown, so you know exactly what you have left and what you are paying, as well as if you actually do need to pay more if you run out of money on your cards.

   The only negative I experienced with this gift-card transaction, was that I didn’t get an email confirmation of my order at all, and no email with the gift card information, which not only confused me, but concerned me. I kept the order confirmation page opened to make sure I didn’t lose the gift card information, because that was the only place I had access to them. Afterwards, I then made a word doc in case I lost access to the order confirmation page. I had also just created an account with that order (It was my second order), so I was luckily able to also get the gift card information by going to the orders tab and going to the order itself, but that took a few days for me to realize that it might be in my orders, and go into my account and see that information. The reason I mention I just made an account is that maybe if I had not, I would have received an email, and maybe emails aren’t sent out to registered users who send the gift cards to themselves? That doesn’t really make sense to me, as everything should still be emailed to the user themselves anyways, not only because it shows that the order was confirmed on your end(I didn’t receive ANY sort of email from Pinch, just Paypal confirmation emails for my purchase), but because I thought I might have sent the gift cards to the wrong email, which is why I was concerned, because I didn’t want to lose out on $300 I paid for gift cards, plus 150 bonus; However, I did verify the email was correct by using the browser “Find” to make sure the emails were exactly the same(which I also did before I submitted the order to make sure I wouldn’t mess up), but I still was unsure and confused about what happened.

   Overall the gift card situation worked out okay in the end for me. I used up the 3 cards and most on the bonus card, so there was no issue with someone else getting my cards. There were no issue ordering with the cards, or applying the cards to use, so everything went extremely smoothly in that regard. I don’t ever buy gift cards, so I wouldn’t normally buy them unless there was another promotion for them(which I would buy again for sure), but would I purchase one for someone who I thought might need it? I don’t see why not. I think this is a great gift for someone who likes spices and would enjoy it. I assume they would receive the email with the gift card information, though, as I’m sure People would have complained by now, that others weren’t getting their gift cards. I want to give Pinch the benefit of the doubt that the reason I didn’t receive an email was because it was an order to myself, but you would think that there would be some sort of order confirmation or something with the gift card information, regardless if I sent the gift cards to myself or not. I received NOTHING in the form of an email from Pinch with regards to this 2nd order. The first order I received an email that my order was received and that the spices would be packed shortly, the 2nd order nothing, but with the 3rd and 4th orders I received emails, which ended up being the same as the first order. The only other thing I could think of is that maybe something happened with the email and maybe I should have received one? I didn’t see anything in spam/trash so I can only assume I didn’t receive it.

   So with all of the above, I want to give a 4/5 for this. While I would have loved to give The Gift Cards a 5/5, I just cannot get over the experience I had(some might give it lower than a 4/5 for this experience, but I believe it worked out in the end okay). While in the end I was able to not only keep the Confirmation page open with the gift cards, but I also found the orders page with the gift cards; However, most people exit the confirmation page right away (I tend to keep my latest orders open, from all websites, just to see what I ordered recently and make sure I receive everything), many people also aren’t tech savvy enough to realize that there is an order page either, and wouldn’t know to even look for their orders, so an email is a must, because most people know how to access basic things such as their email. This information should have been emailed to us as a confirmation of some sort. It just made the entire interaction confusing and made me unsure of myself and if I made a mistake on my end and accidentally sent it to the wrong email, to which I would have had to contact Pinch, etc, It just adds a bunch of unnecessary uncertainty, as well as unnecessary stress/burden, to something that should have been a relatively easy transaction, for something that should have automatically happened(automatic email being sent out).

   If it was something out of Pinch’s control, and I should have received an email, then I will accept that, however my experience still stands with what happened, regardless if I should have or not. It’s possible that reminder emails for gift cards should be sent if that’s the case, in case the initial email doesn’t make it (If the initial email doesn’t make it, then something needs to be fixed, regardless). Maybe a followup email should be sent a few days later, and maybe reminders every x days if the gift card isn’t being used? Similar to the reminders that the cart has an item in it and if you want to check out (I know this is automatic, so I’m not sure if there is something similar already in place in the checkout system for gift cards, etc, as well, since I do get checkout emails from Pinch when I haven’t checked out and there is something in my cart).

   Overall, I hope Pinch will be able to fix the issues and make sure emails are being sent out with the Gift Card information for users who purchase gift cards for themselves. The only other thing I can think of is that maybe it’s a security thing where the system doesn’t want an additional vector to be open in case Email is compromised, so it wants you to keep everything on their site if it’s a gift-card order to oneself, and only those who you HAVE TO send gift card codes to, will they get an email(which I’ve never seen before but who knows how systems are these days). However in that case…. There should be some sort of message stating that the gift codes wont be emails to us, in red font or something on the checkout page/confirmation-page, so people would know that they aren’t getting a confirmation email… I have the order page open now, I don’t see anything saying that. This listing also doesn’t mention that, which it should if that was the case. So either way I’m not sure what happened, but I hope it can be fixed.

   Either way, thank you so much Pinch for your Gift Card Promotion! I hope to have the opportunity to purchase more gift cards during a future promotion, and I’m sure the next transaction will go much smother.

   Thank you!

   • Thomas McGee – January 19, 2025

     Thank you for this feedback. We have made a few little tweaks to the emails and that seems to have stopped the issue of the gift cards getting filtered out as spam. I am also resending yours, so you have hard copies in your email.

2. Rated 5 out of 5

   Jason (verified owner) – December 29, 2025

   2025 Update:

   I wanted to give an update to my previous review, as New Gift Cards were purchased for this year’s Sale.

   The gift cards were emailed to me instantly, so everything was updated as per Thomas’ reply to my initial review.

   I just wanted to mention that everything seems to be working as intended and that I received 1 email per gift card, for those who were wondering how they are sent.

   I also just recalled that once Thomas had updated the system at the start of this year, I had then received the emails for last year’s gift cards, so I did in fact get those emails once things were settled.

   Gift Cards are also located in the “Orders” themselves even if the email doesn’t come, for those who don’t want to look through a bunch of emails for the right one.