Doesn't sound like it is to keep you coming back but rather to increase the chances that you will forget about the $3 left on the second card and never use it.

Should have just handed them one at a time. Expend all on one card, have them ask for further payment and provide the second card. Odds are they wouldn't want to go fiddling around too much with voiding the transaction and such.

just give them one so they use it all, then give them the other when they give you your remaining balance.

I second psuchad's idea: I doubt this policy will result in any increased number of visits as most people will likely keep both cards together. Perhaps they're expecting people to give one of their cards to someone else?

Or perhaps this employee's actions were too honest and their real plan is by - not telling people - expecting them to throw away one of the cards in the belief that one is actually empty.

Just like coupons, you hold 'em in your hand and feed them one at a time to the cashier so you can control the order of how they get fed in the machine. Keep them in your wallet with your cash and pull out one at a time, if you think they might get squirrely once they see what you're holding.

It's probably some limitation with their order entry software, and the cashier happily reiterated the canned explanation that his manager told him to to say.

The more troubling part of this post is this: my sister and I received Wendy's gift cards for Christmas, and in this instance, she was willing to buy lunch for the whole family if I'd use my gift card to cover the rest.

The title of this post should have been Sister spends my Wendy's gift buying the family lunch!

You have to keep the value of unredeemed gift cards written down against your books for at least 2 years from the date of issuance, so having people forget and throw them out does Wendy's no good.

At least she was honest about their reasoning... as lousy as it is.

Wait.. what? The OP received both gift cards as "change" for the transaction. Let's assume for a moment that the OP wants to get a meal at roughly $7. If he received one gift card with $10 remaining, he would leave the store with $3 and some change and would have to come back anyway to use it.

They gave him two gifts cards with $3 and $7. If he purchases said meal for $7, he will use one of the gift cards and then will have to return.

In the end, no matter which method Wendy's chose, the OP still has a gift card remaining after his next transaction and will have to return to use it. How is giving him two lower-value cards going to ensure his return any more than one higher card?

I'm going to agree with everyone else and say that Wendy's simply did this in hopes that he loses one of them.

If your using your Wendy's gift card for eating, and not cutting cocaine, you fail both your family and this Consumerist culture.

I can't speak for Wendy's gift cards, but I know that with some gift cards, you can call the toll-free number on the back and combine the balances of more than one card onto just one.

sounds like a good policy. for them i mean.

At least you got the change back. I had to fight to get my change back on my Gamestop gift card because 'it's only a few bucks'. granted it wasn't much of a fight but the manager seemed surprised i actually wanted my card back with 3 bucks and some change left on it.

I agree that the solution would be to give on gift card at a time but most people wouldn't think that they'd purposefully split the cost across both cards like that until after it happens to them.

If this had happened to me I'd stay away after using up the gift cards.

@Fresh-Fest-1986: ha!

@harlock_JDS: The manager wasn't really surprised. They were hoping to embarrass you into agreeing to let them keep the money by acting like you were the one being unreasonable.

@Jack Doyle: As well as being honest, she was cheery! Lately it's far more common to get cranky food handlers.

Who buys gift cards for fast food? McBucks were cool for kids when things were cheap and it was special. But now and for adults?

@putermcgee: Isn't that what OldManOnTheHill basically just posted! Come on people, pay attention!

@HardyHaermm: Yes. Yes, it does.

Money for nothing two years down the line.. is money for nothing.

@danno50: The comments were clearly typed and submitted within seconds of each other. Relax.

@danno50:
Looking at the timestamps, I'm going to assume they were probably both typing it at the same time.

@TurboBrick: Huh? Since when do cashiers care how many coupons you use? Cashiers aren't interested in how much money you save, as they neither lose nor gain anything from it. Customers who act like cashiers are incompetent or not trustworthy and try to do their job for them are annoying and very belittling to the cashier.

@Daemon_of_Waffle: That was my first reaction to this story, and I think it every-single-time I'm there. Not that I wouldn't want them, but I can't imagine any of my friends/fam choosing to get them for me.

The mere notion of anyone using a gift card at Wendy's is just mind boggling to me...seriously does anyone else feel that way?

If you're thinking of getting someone a gift card to a fast food restaurant...you're probably better off just giving them cash instead.

@OldManOnTheHill: Yeah, now that you know that would be the best way to go about it. It seems like a ridiculous policy in the first place.

@HardyHaermm: It's still money in the bank either way. Holding a liability for 2 years is nothing compared to the ROI on selling air.

@SabreDC: That's exactly what I was thinking. No matter how they split it up...there will still be the same amount of money on a gift card or cards. They will still come back to spend it.

Should have used the $10 remaining to buy a $10 gift card.

@HardyHaermm: Actually, it does.

For example, you give Wendy's $20 for a gift card and use $10. If you never go back and spend the remaining $10, Wendy ends up keeping it. She may carry it on her books as a liability, but at some point she probably recognizes the income. Even if she carries it as a liability ad infinitum, she still has your $10 and you don't.

I think we're jumping the gun here on Wendy's policy. This sounds to me like an individual store's manager doling out his or her own "policy" to employees in an effort to boost the store sales. It's a good idea around Christmastime, but somehow I doubt that this outrageous policy is a nationwide Wendy's procedure. Keep in mind that one store (which could be an independent franchise) does not speak for the entire chain.

I worked at a Wendy's in Michigan a year ago and we couldn't do this... unless the total of 20.84 was on two different tabs. When I worked there, and it was one tab of 20.84, the computer system would recognize the first card scanned ($15) and take all the money out of it, then take the remaining 5.84 out of the other card. I could see this happening if there was two different orders (8.50 & 12.35) and the employee couldn't remember which card they used for the first order and thus grabbed the other one to scan it... It was much easier back in the day, before 2005 I think, when they had "Wendy's Bucks" one dollar each and you rang them in much like cash.

All this talking about Wendy's is getting me hungry... I'll go grab myself something and ask the people working if they can split orders for gift cards. From the employees perspective it is a horrible idea to split orders on two different cards. Towards the end of January you start getting people coming in with five plus cards each with less than a dollar on them. All that scanning frightens me more than the baconator.

@batsy: Except in this case it would have ensured that the coupons got used as the customer wanted and not as the cashier decided. If the cashier feels belittled along the way, that's too bad.

Well...at least they were honest about it?

@batsy: I wish they were all like that, but I keep hearing stories of coupon nazis who make up policies as they go along. I don't really blame the cashiers as much as bad training from above, which is what created the situation in the original story.

Anyways, I prefer to feed my coupons so that I can announce "here's 3 for this, one for that" to keep things clear, and sometimes the order matters if you have store and manufacturers coupons for the same item. Walgreens holiday dollars would print out if your order total before coupons was $25, but if the cashier started scanning coupons before everything was in and totaled they wouldn't print.

Always use your gift cards in the proper order and present them at the correct time. I bought some panties for the GF at Vicki's Secret. First I presented the buy 1 and get one free merchandise and when she asked for payment I gave them the freebie gift card that came in the mail. In similar situations my father would ask if he could get this free using that card and so on. Of course it's so easy for them to say no up front, but after they have everything rung up, they may be less likely to say no. Don't give them the option and present your gift card as a form of payment. So after I hand them the gift card, then they ask for the balance, which I pay in cash. There's a sequence to follow..and by making it more difficult for the cashier to undo what she's done, you can get your transaction through with those questionable deals.

@psuchad: No, I think this is more of a case where the employee didn't know how to do it properly and probably split the order roughly in two to use a card on each, and then made up a shaky excuse.

As one who has wrangled with gift cards in my retail past, I can affirm: gift cards are often a pain in the ass for the retail-level worker. A lot of places seem to have Draconian policies and not a lot of infrastructure to support them (ie, only one register can redeem). For extra fun, next time try to pay with a combination of gift cards, travelers cheques, and a Discover card.

@YamiNoSenshi: Seems like common sense.

Stupid policy, how is she 'splitting them up' with $7 and $3?

@Roclawzi: No, I really believe that the employee did it right. In fact, too right, as the policy is annoying as fuck. GC's are by far the hardest kind of tender (outside of checks, but those are hard for different reasons, and Wendy's doesn't take checks), and in the systems I've seen, it would take extra work to do it the way the cashier did.

@harlock_JDS: Hrm. Arguing to get a mgr to actually give you your change? Weak! I'd be surprised if there was even any mechanism by which that would be recorded as additional store revenue. It's not money in the till, and they can't get at the remaining card credit (unless the guy pockets it and spends it himself) Sounds like the mgr has drunk a bit too much kool aid for anyone's good.

@nforcer: It is a policy so annoying that I would never have let it go. Of course, having wendy's GC's might make me kill myself first, but anyrate...

Since I'm in California, I would have just had them cash the cards out and tell them that due to their policy, I'll just take my money and business elsewhere.

@billbobbins: What? You should never have to do this. Either it is policy not to accept the GC with the BOGO deal, or they should perform the transaction that way to begin with. A proper POS system won't even let you apply specials in non-policy ways without an override. It shouldn't be a matter of 'undoing'.

I'm pretty sure you just ran into cashiers who are SO LAZY, they would rather occasionally cheat you than do things right, not the case that you 'get away' with something by altering your tender order. I'm good at math, and not afraid to say "no, you rang that up wrong. 15% of x, with the $3 gift card comes to y. You did this/that/this which is why it is coming up z."

@MyerGalute: Unfortunately, when you call the number on the back of the wendy's card, all they will do is use the extra gift card to order and mail you one of those insane red pigtail wigs. fun for parties!

I doubt this was a real policy.

@psuchad: My idea: New employee calls over supervisor/manager. Manager decides to pull this move, because he thinks it'll get the customer to come back or lose the card, both net wins for Wendy's. Probably not a corporate policy, but I imagine the manager may brag about it to the franchise owner.

Proofread?

"It's a Minor inconvenience, but it seems like Wendy's is going awfully out of their way to keep customers coming back. It's a minor inconvenience..."

/end being a jerk

@OldManOnTheHill: Only if you know about the asinine policy to begin with.

@danno50: Isn't it obvious that they were typing them at practically the same time! Come on danno50, pay attention!

:-p