"Duplicate" Rewards Accounts because of Gift Cards

[nbunda]

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?

[HearthpizzeriaB]

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.

[au79teahouse]

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.