I ran into the same issue where I have purchased three $50 from Walmart Market that were redeemed. and unusable. I called Apple Support and the best advice they had was if the cards were purchased with a Debit/Credit card then reach out to the card merchant and report fraud and stolen card value and hopefully they'll refund the cost back to the card. I asked if they could tell me the date it was used, what software was purchased, iOS App, subscription charged against it or to which Apple iTunes email/acct it was applied to and she told me they had NO WAY OF SEEING WHAT the cards were used for which I find extremely odd since these would have a high likelihood of being added to someone's iTunes Acct in which requires a login and then the card info added to the iTunes acct to be charged against. We know there are instances that this information could be provided & the amt could be charged back against that thief's iTunes acct or debited from the card connected to their Apple ID etc and covered in the terms and conditions a disclaimer ref stolen APPLE Gift Cards applied to their accounts, especially when the rightful owner can provide the card, the card envelope, the sales receipt, verify the card used to purchase belongs to the person making the claim etc. There are many ways the purchaser who had no control over the theft but seeing the big picture, why should APPLE care, they're getting their money regardless so no loss to them, just tell the consumer to go buy another one and good luck next time. It's a poor and greedy business practice. Home Depot requires the purchaser to scan their DL or ID card and add their mobile number at the time of issue which automatically registers it to that person and upon redeeming the card you must provide the same information to prevent this kind of fraud and theft. The technology has been developed & implemented for at least 2 years now & the POS software is available and ready to be used by much smaller companies outside of the tech industry. If APPLE was on the losing end then they'd have implemented a cure for the disease long ago but Gift Card Fraud only hurts their consumers and increases their profits with additional sales with us buying more cards when needed. APPLE, you need to do better than this.
