You’d think you just use a One4All Gift Card like any other Gift Card wouldn’t you? Except it really isn’t that simple. It’s so difficult in fact, it’s almost as if they don’t want you to use it.

I ‘ve not seen One4All Gift Cards before and I hope never to see one ever again. The pain of using it is just too much to bear for someone of my fragile mindset. But use it I did and I jumped through hoops and clambered over obstacles to get there. It’s like the SAS Selection equivalent of e-vouchers. If such a thing exists.

Amazon

Vikki and I received a One4All Gift Card each for Christmas and a very nice present it was too. The great thing about it is you can use it in any number of shops and online retailers (theoretically anyway). Currys, Argos, M&S, Wagamama, you name it, it’s on the list. So, I thought I’d better use….

“Can you use it on Amazon?”

“What?”

“Can you use it on Amazon?”

“No, I don’t think so why?”

“You said, you name it, it’s on there. So I named Amazon.”

“Well, it’s a figure of speech, it’s not supposed to be taken literally.”

“So you literally can’t name it and it’s on there then….literally speaking.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Well, thanks for clearing that up. Carry on.”

Anyway, I thought I better use these ‘bad boys’ before they get shoved in a drawer and lost or forgotten about altogether. After all, there was £40 burning a hole in my online pocket.

Maldon

Also for Christmas Vikki got a DVD of a really old film called Riding High starring the famous stunt rider Eddie Kidd. Remember him? No? Ok then. The reason Vikki got the DVD was a.) I bought it for her and b.) because the big climax of the film was shot in Maldon, where we live. And no, it’s not a load of cheap rubbish, it’s got Irene Handl in it.

Idiot Boy Beeching

Many years ago Maldon had two railway stations: Maldon East and Maldon West and across the River Blackwater was a railway viaduct. After idiot boy Beeching closed all the railways in the 60’s to save himself £20 a year on servicing costs, the bridge fell into disrepair and collapsed, leaving an 80 foot gap which is what Eddie Kidd jumped on his Yamaha back in 1979.

So, I bought this DVD online for Vikki but we had a slight problem. My DVD player is so old it only has a Scart connecion, not HDMI. And my telly is so new it only has HDMI, not Scart. So, it’s a bit like me speaking in English to someone who only understands Korean. That was an analogy by the way and not a very good one.

21st Century Technology

So, I thought I’ll buy a Scart/HDMI converter. Well, that’s more difficult than it sounds but you can get them. In the end I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade the DVD player to one that was built in the current century. And this is where everything started to unravel.

After scouring the web for HDMI DVD players, with Blu-Ray, 4K, HD upscaling, region free, blah blah blah, I found an LG which was only about £60. Result I thought. Yes, it is. If you can buy it.

Eventually I discovered one at Currys which I could pick up in Chelmsford, so I decided to buy it. I should’ve known better. Every time I use Currys anything I want is ‘currently out of stock‘, and every time I try to buy something from Argos it is also ‘currently out of stock but available for pick up in our Weymouth branch‘.

Now, the One4All card states it is a “Gift Card” but can you use it online? No. What you have to do (after you’ve spent half an hour trying to use it as a gift card and getting nothing but errors on the payment page) is you have to go onto the One4All website and convert it to a Gift Card or an eGift.

One4all Multi-Store Gift Cards – Thousands of choices with one gift card (yeah, right)

Cookies & Cash

Then you can convert it to, in this instance, a Currys Gift Card and then you’re supposed to just type in the gift card details on your payment page and off you go. But it’s not that simple. And the reason it’s not that simple? Because of something called Cookies and Cache. What they do is hold information locally (on your phone, laptop etc.) of the page you just visited. To speed things up (allegedly). So, if there’s an error on the page you just visited, it reloads the error for you. Hmm, so not so good then.

Because if you go back to your payment page and it is stating your last payment failed (because you were using a Gift Card that wasn’t a Gift Card) then you won’t get any further. It just says ‘payment declined’ or even better ‘we’re unable to process gift cards right now. Please try later’. So, I closed the page down, reloaded it and went back. Nope. The same error messages appeared. So I logged out of my Currys account, logged back in and guess what? It still didn’t work.

Variant

By now of course the laptop had been aimed out of the window and the man next door had reported a ‘domestic incident’ to the local constabulary. So, when I went to retrieve the laptop from the front garden (after an hour of Buddhist Meditation), he was able to pacify the ‘boys in blue’ and explain the mistake. “I’m not surprised,” the Detective Inspector said, removing the handcuffs. “The data we have is that the “One4All Variant” is causing greater disharmony across the UK than “Omicron” at present.”¹

Computer says ‘No’

After the police had left I discovered what I had to do was close down Google Chrome (or MS Edge) which flushed the Cache (deleted it), then I went back to Currys, bought the flaming DVD player again, and then and only then, did the payment system deem me worthy of purchasing a product on its holiest of holy site.

It’s almost as if…well, you know.

So, my advice to anyone who has an One4All Gift Card is this:- Either a.) throw it in the bin and pretend you never received it, b.) ask to have it replaced with an Amazon Card, or c.) bring it round here and I’ll spend it for you, because I know about Cookies and Cache.

And, it transpires (brace yourself for the word play) if you’ve got the wrong cache then the right cash is worthless.

I love Christmas.

Thank you for your time.

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1. Warning. This element of the story may have been fabricated.