Rise.ai: Gift Cards & Loyalty

We have a complicated workflow where customers receive a bonus on top of their 5% rewards if they hit certain thresholds. This caused a glitch in how rise handled the rewards and sometimes gave customers double rewards. After some back and forth with Rise which took a while they have mostly fixed this and have also compensated us for the customers who received and redeemed more than they should have. The app does not give you great reporting to be able to monitor this situation or view pending rewards and as such it took me a while to catch this error. If they fix reporting and we confirm this app is working properly I will raise my review again.

UPDATE 9/7/2021: At the request of Rise, I am updating my review and adding some stars to my formerly one-star review. Before writing my initial review, I reached out to customer service via chat to confirm that, if I uninstall the app, customers would not be able to access their gift card codes in their email. After expressing my disappointment that this is the case, I was told by CS that they wished they had better news (and obviously no resolution). After writing the review, I was offered 12 months of continued support at no charge. Hopefully, all of the gift card recipients will have redeemed their gift cards by then. In the meantime, I have quit using Rise and returned to using Shopify's included gift card process. The original review starts below. Short version: Buyer beware. Don't use this app unless you plan on using it forever. I started using this app during the pandemic, since I wasn't open to walk-in shopping and people were buying gift cards online to support the store. Once gift cards sales dropped off, I planned on discontinuing using the app. Turns out, if you want t stop using this app, customers who purchased (or received) gift cards will no longer have access in their emails to the code that allows them to use the gift cards. Not a good look for me or the gift card giver! So I can either screw my customers or continue paying $20/month until all gift cards have been redeemed. Apparently, I can download the codes and the customers can get them from me. But wow, that's a huge headache for them and for me! I wish I had never used this app.

Quick customer service but some resolved issues The rise.ai team is nice and friendly and get back to you quickly. However, if you're looking for a good integration with ReCharge, there is still a lot of work to do. Customers have to give their credit card details when they received a gift, which leads to a lot of frustration and mostly a lot of extra work. I hope they take up a defensive role towards Recharge and push hem to make sure this issue is resolved

We use shopify for both our online & brick & mortar sales. We thought Rise we be a great way to utilize gift cards & store credit for our loyalty program, rather than the points system we had previously used with S Loyalty. Dana was super helpful in getting us set up and running. Unfortunately, the POS integrate was not as seamless as we had hoped for. You aren't able to do everything necessary to manage the store credit or gift cards completely within the Shopify POS app. Too much back and forth between the computer and POS to handle everyday occurrences that should all be within the POS app. It's just too clunky and enough of an upgrade to pay the $200 price tag. If they could figure out how to get all the functionality into the Shopify POS app we would stick around, but instead we're again shopping for something else.

It seems like a great app but I do see one issue. I had this app installed last year for a couple months then deleted since I didn't have enough customer engagement to make it worth the monthly fee. So when I decided to give it another try for the upcoming holiday rush, the old card was already pre-saved but for some reason it was not linking up in the Rise admin. It would show the card as active but it would also say the product was not linked, so there was a disconnect somewhere. I deleted the gift card in question that was showing it wasn't linked and now I can't create a new card. There should be a function to delete a card from the rise admin so that if there are any errors, it can possibly be resolved by making a new card. Kind of frustrating..

This app does not work, is not supported, and should not be used. Developers claim a version 2 is on the way, but in the meantime they have dropped all support of the current version and should remove the app from the store.

Edit: I've revised this review from 1 star to 3. The development team contacted me after the original review and were quick explain that a breakdown in communication had occurred and the app was indeed supported and functional. They promptly installed the app and worked with me in testing it.

Sadly, the app has a number of fairly serious bugs, all of which could have been overcome, I think. But the app requires us to manually input shipping addresses one line at a time (you can't even copy/paste the entire address). We do enough volume that the idea of manually inputting shipping addresses for fulfillment is unthinkable. The app seems designed for use by stores who do very small volume. We do anywhere from 100s to 1000s of orders a week and Gift Wizard in its current state has no means to support that kind of business.

I'll certainly be interested in taking another look if the shipping address issue and other bugs are addressed.

UPDATE:

Since writing my 1 star review just a few days ago, I have received 2 emails asking me to change/delete my review. Instead, I am changing my rating from 1 star to 3 stars. Regarding my issue on not responding to my email, they kept telling me that they were "too busy". Not my problem, and to be CLEAR, i was mad that he responded to my email 2 days after I sent it, not answering any of my questions. They did offer me a free subscription or something of that nature which I do not want since I found another app that only costs $7 a month and they set everything up for me just hours after installing it. I appreciate the offers, but asking someone to delete their review is unfair and to be honest pretty unprofessional.. And using the same "too busy" excuse over & over again is annoying. Maybe this app is good for other businesses but it's just not for me. This is how I feel, this is my opinion. Everyone has a different opinion. I would appreciate it if I did not receive any more emails after this.

This review is for their horrendous customer service. I downloaded the app and am so confused about pricing, what the app offers and how it works. I figured I would just get the app then email them asking my questions since everyone says they are "sooo great with helping" ya right. I emailed Ari, asked 3 different questions and he responded a day later (which is way too long to wait) literally not answering any of them. I told him to re read my email and answer my questions since you literally didn't answer any of them. Now i have not heard back since. So annoyed since I wanted to get the gift cards out and on the site for holiday season. But now i am just going to cancel this overpriced app and download another one I have found. I wouldnt be surprised if i got a response to my email tomorrow after they see this review. over the app. 1 star is too much.

Hat leider nicht wirklich die gewünschten Funktionen und für den Funktionsumfang deutlich teurer als vergleichbare Apps.

*Rating based purely on customer service*

UPDATE 2/29/2016:
I was contacted by the GiftWizard team and they installed the app today. I considered removing my review but I chose to change my rating instead because I believe transparency is important in any business and people should chose this app based on the overall experience and not just one bad experience. At the time of this writing the app is working well and I have no issues with it.

Original review 2/26/2016:
This is a review purely based on customer service. I downloaded this app last week. I sent 2 emails last week asking for help with the app. no response. a week later i get an email apologizing and asking if I still need help. I reply this morning asking for help once again. Its the end of the day and not a response. Never got an opportunity to use the app so i don't know if its good. I'm removing it.