topic "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards in Guest Experience

"Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

nbunda — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 14:12:05 GMT

An issue that causes so much confusion for our staff is duplicate rewards accounts that are created when a guest with an existing rewards account uses a gift card.

The next time they try to manually add rewards, the staff will see the guest listed twice. I've looked into this each time, and the second one is always linked to a gift card they had used. Now, when this happens, it appears the rewards balance is internally linked between the two accounts, which is good, but the staff has no way of verifying that, and it leads to frustration for the staff and guest. There has to be a way to do it better. I personally think the days of rewards balances being tied to physical gift cards should be left in the past.

It also creates a concern for me that if someone gets a hold of another person's gift card that happens to be linked to their loyalty account, a bad actor could potentially use the gift card to always have access to the original guest's rewards account.

Is this a concern/issue for anyone else? Is there something else I'm missing that causes this?

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

HearthpizzeriaB — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 20:10:40 GMT

On your comment about someone having another persons gift card has been an issue for us. We would reuse gift cards, but found they could be linked to another persons rewards account. We had to stop reusing cards.

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

au79teahouse — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 02:16:12 GMT

This is an existing issue when people's phone number or email address accidentally linked to other's account/profile for years. Wrongfully linked account can happen very often especially when you have Guest Facing Display and allow customers to sign up/check in before/during placing their order. It seems there isn't a solution to this issue at the moment.

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

nbunda — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 15:44:20 GMT

This is actually a separate issue that is equally as frustrating and twice as concerning as the one I described! People can fairly easily end up with someone else's credit card linked on their loyalty account 😬.

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

ashokr — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 17:37:17 GMT

True, duplicate rewards are like a person having 2 watches, can never be sure 🙂

Ideally I would expect the account is recorded with a phone number as unique identifier, and that person can pay with any card, but customer should manage cards that can earn rewards under their profile. So its self managed by the customer, but system is automatic. Irrespective of using a gift card, or CC1 or CC2, rewards will go to one account.

Loyalty needs an overhaul if this isn't supported such. I haven't activated loyalty yet, but trying to do that soon. Would be a great addition.

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

mollyd — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 15:07:17 GMT

Yes! This is so frustrating for us and our staff as well. I've explained it multiple times but I understand everyone's confusion, it isn't necessary to have physical rewards cards. Especially because most customers themselves will admit they don't want to carry around a dedicated loyalty card. I've had countless customers ask to merge accounts when they just have a gift card attached to their account. I really hope they overhaul and update the loyalty program sometime soon. I would also love to be able to offer tiered rewards so higher frequency guests can be rewarded more than the casual diner.

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

ashokr — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 18:53:08 GMT

Although I'm not sure if spending with loyalty card who gets the reward? If the original purchaser of the card had Loyalty account, wouldn't the system give him loyalty points? I'm not sure. Someone within toast should tell if the purchaser of the gift card gets the points or the user of the card. I would think the former.

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

www — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 03:58:18 GMT

Are the gift cards automatically linked to the rewards account if the information (email or phone number) is the same?

We've had a lot of customers requesting to merge accounts and it's often not an easy process because searching for accounts in Toast Web can be extremely slow. Especially if the old account they created is from several months ago and they also don't remember which store they created their account in.

Oftentimes a single query can take 10 minutes or more to load.

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

www — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 04:06:08 GMT

The purchaser of the gift cards does not get rewards points.

Only the gift card user gets reward points. The person who uses the gift card to pay will get reward points.

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

nbunda — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 16:24:54 GMT

What I think is happening is:

Guest provides their rewards phone #
Guest uses a gift card to pay
That gift card now has its rewards balance linked to the guest’s rewards balance, but it’s still technically 2 different rewards accounts - their balances are just internally linked.
Next time the guest tells the staff their rewards phone number, two accounts are listed. Guest has no idea why. Staff is confused. Nobody has any clue that they’re linked aside from guessing. Nobody made a choice to link the two accounts - it’s just automatic, and confusing.

I think a better approach would be to never have a rewards account on a gift card. Leave them separate. Rewards should only be tied to personal information like a phone number or email address, and that’s it. If the guest WANTS to transfer their gift card balance to their rewards account, give them an option to do that. But none of this automatic linking/treating a rewards account the same as a gift card. It’s confusing to everyone.

Just my two cents.

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

HearthpizzeriaB — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 18:24:04 GMT

At least with the gift cards we can order from toast, you can use the QR code to register a gift card as a stand alone rewards account for a customer. I assume the ability to do that is what causes the issues we are having.

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

rcmck — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 19:21:27 GMT

Yes the issue is every gift card is also a rewards account, and every rewards account is also a gift card.

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

HearthpizzeriaB — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 23:04:02 GMT

agree.

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

rcmck — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 03:42:03 GMT

On the topic of rewards, anyone else experiencing rewards not being selectable after running a credit card sometimes? They show up on the screen but you can't do anything with them, have to cancel or skip and reapply them and adjust the payment.

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

au79teahouse — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 04:04:55 GMT

Not being selectable as the option is greyed out?

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

rcmck — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 04:07:42 GMT

I wouldn't say fully greyed out, like when they don't have quite enough for a reward, just not selectable, I'll have to get some pictures or video next time.

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

au79teahouse — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 04:28:08 GMT

I just tested it, and it seems to be working as intended. That said, I do recall encountering a similar glitch to what you described, though it appears to be quite rare.

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

nbunda — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 17:58:31 GMT

I did recently experience a similar issue. The guest clearly had a loyalty balance eligible for a reward, and the back end showed a reward available, but it could not be redeemed on the POS. I had to manually add and then remove 10 points in order for the redemption to become available on the POS

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

rcmck — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 22:55:54 GMT

Yeah it's very random, though I have been told it's happening more often.

Re: "Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

HearthpizzeriaB — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 19:13:49 GMT

Not to take this off on a tangent, however I have had a husband and wife want to merge their rewards accounts. It is a major pain in the neck. For the record, if you have two accounts with different emails, they cannot be combined. You need to edit one of the accounts to have the same email address as the other account you want to merge it with.