Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have always had great luck with Amazon gift cards via email, so I assumed a physical gift card would be just as great. I was wrong. I ordered this gift card as a Christmas present for my sister. I purchased it on Amazon.com and had it shipped directly to her. Next day shipping was perfect given that I waited until the last minute to do Christmas shopping, but that's where the good part of this card ended. When my sister tried to enter the claim code on the card, she got an error message saying there was something wrong with the claim code. She emailed customer service and the response she got was that she needed to have the sender (me) contact the store I bought the card from to have it activated. Let me remind you that I purchased this card on Amazon.com. So I got in touch with customer service via the online chat option and was told that my issue would have to be elevated to the gift card team and that the card could be activated in 24 to 48 hours. I told the customer service rep that this was not an acceptable option. Then the customer service rep said he'd see what he could do... and came back with the response that I need to go to the store I bought the card from and have make sure the store activates it. Let me remind you yet again that I bought this card from Amazon.com. Then I gave the customer service rep the card's claim code and the Amazon.com order number. The next response I got was that the gift card's claim code did not match up with what was listed for the order number. Ugh. At this point the customer service rep suggested handing this off to the gift card team, which I agreed to. A few hours later I got an email saying that my credit card would be refunded for this purchase. I never asked for a refund... just wanted to get the gift card working, but in a round about way it did solve my problem because I then went ahead and bought an email gift certificate and that worked perfectly. After this experience with the card not working and the repeated suggestion from customer service to go to the store I purchased the card from and have them activate it, when I did in fact buy it on Amazon.com, I would definitely steer away from the physical gift card and go for the email version instead.