Zavvi suspends gift card sales

Zavvi stores nationwide are no longer offering consumers the option of purchasing pre-paid gift cards.

GamesIndustry.biz has learnt that sales staff for the UK retailer were told this weekend that they would no longer be able to sell the vouchers.

"We have a slight technical issue with our system sells that them," Stephen Lynn, senior PR and promotions manager, told GamesIndustry.biz. "We still accept them and we're about to get it resolved today."

Lynn was keen to assure customers that the problem was contained to Zavvi stores only and that the cards are still available through its partners.

"We still accept them, if the customer has one and wants to buy something they can still do it," he explained. "If you still want to buy gift cards, you can do that in Clintons and other places - we just have a slight technical problem at the moment. It should be fixed this morning."

When asked why the company's website no longer offered vouchers, Lynn explained that Zavvi.co.uk only ever offered gift cards for use in the online store, which has since been suspended following distributor EUK's decent into administration.

"Because of the whole EUK issue at the moment we have stopped selling gift certificates online," he said. "We have two different products, we have the gift voucher for our stores or the gift certificates we have online and where we've obviously temporarily suspended our website because it's filled by EUK's warehouse, we obviously can't sell customers gift certificates for something they can't use."

Lynn went on to comment on the company's supply issues as a whole, saying that while trading through the online store has been suspended the actual stores were now dealing direct with suppliers.

"Our website is currently suspended because of the fact that Woolworths went into administration and EUK is a part of that. They still are the delivery side, the stock side, of our website," he explained.

"Our stores are fine, our stores are operating normally and we have all the new releases and an all new range and we're dealing direct with suppliers."

When asked about the relationship with EUK, Lynn noted: "Our owners are currently in conversation with the Woolworths Group administrators."