By Mike Cassidy
Mercury News Columnist

Article Launched: 01/11/2008 01:40:51 AM PST

‘Loose Ends Blog’

• Dec. 29 entry: Think twice before buying gift cards at Safeway

I felt so alone when I blogged about the shabby treatment I endured recently when I tried to return a bum iTunes gift card to my local Safeway. But who knew?

The blog post exposed a teeming community - a miserable mob suffering from gift-card disappointment, disillusion and anxiety.

Gift cards, the electronic equivalent to those archaic paper certificates, are now omnipresent. Consumers spent tens of billions on them last year. And Safeway has placed great hope in its Gift Card Mall, offering cards for hundreds of places from Black Angus to Bed Bath & Beyond - and beyond.

Turns out the gift card - this latest, greatest thing since Frappuccino - comes wrapped in its own set of glitches, rules and emotions.

I know. Problems rarely arise with gift cards. But when they do, it’s a huge deal. They’re gifts after all, saddled with sentiment and the understanding that the thought counts. But a gift card that is seamlessly accepted by a major retailer counts more.

“It makes me look like a bad mom,” says Joan Miller of Mountain View, who’s still smarting from a gift-card boondoggle a year ago. “You cross something off your list, like ‘get iTunes card’ and you don’t think it’s going to take five more trips to get it working.”

She bought the $25 card at Safeway to reward her eighth-grade daughter’s straight A’s. But the Apple Web site didn’t recognize the card as valid. After several frustrating trips to Safeway searching for the

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right manager and fruitlessly waiting for his promised call, she finally gave up. “I was so disappointed for my daughter.”

Tracy Baxter was disappointed, too. The $100 Visa gift card she bought at Safeway and sent to her 8-year-old niece came up as invalid. Baxter’s husband took the card back to Safeway. A manager told him there was nothing he could do and directed him to a third-party Web site. The site had a phone number, which Tracy Baxter called.

“It just said, ‘Invalid card number, please re-enter,’ ” says Baxter, of Milpitas. “Over and over.”

And me? When the iTunes site rejected the $25 gift card I bought at Safeway, I took it back. Two managers told me there was nothing they could do. Take it up with Apple. I kicked and screamed and they grudgingly refunded my money.

Miller and Baxter were among a number of readers who added their gift-card frustrations to my blog. (See the original at www.mercextra.com/blogs/cassidy.) The complaints were hardly all about Safeway. Some railed against service charges imposed on some gift cards. Others complained of incorrect card balances. And one commentator said she could help. That was Teri Llach (pronounced Jack), a vice president at Blackhawk Network, a multimillion-dollar subsidiary of Pleasanton-based Safeway. The outfit runs Safeway’s gift card program and others.

The good news from Llach? Safeway has a procedure to deal with gift cards that retailers don’t recognize for whatever reason. And, yes, problems should be handled at Safeway without customers having to deal with outside parties. Store employees are supposed to call Safeway’s Customer Care center. An expert there will help sort things out and see that the customer is treated fairly.

The bad news? Not enough people who actually work in Safeway’s stores seem to be in on the procedure. Llach assured me that a training program is part of Safeway’s gift-card push. And Safeway spokesman Brian Dowling says it may be time to reinforce that training.

But I wouldn’t take any chances. If you’re ever in a gift-card battle with an unhelpful Safeway clerk or manager, insist that he or she call the Customer Care center. And to be on the safe side?

Bring this column with you.