How to Gift Pogo Gems

Comments

1. dogset says

   March 26, 2015 at 7:34 pm

   Thank you all for testing and working on this. Will have to figure cost of gems this way. My brain hurts got my first smart phone today. Do they call them smart phones cause they make us feel so dumb.

   • Lura says

     March 26, 2015 at 7:40 pm

     dogset: it’s not cheaper than buying the Gems for yourself through Pogo, but that’s the price of being able to gift I guess. 😉 Here are some posts that do the math for you:

     https://www.badgehungry.com/2013/03/26/new-pogo-gems-packages/
     https://www.badgehungry.com/2013/09/24/heads-up-change-to-ea-cards/

2. John says

   March 27, 2015 at 7:55 am

   Does this apply to International sales I have a friend in Serbia that would love to get Gems

3. MomsBassetHound says

   March 27, 2015 at 8:08 am

   john #3 – No………..

   EA Card PIN codes can only be redeemed by players residing in the United States.

   Suz

4. Ally says

   March 27, 2015 at 8:49 am

   I’ve been getting them off of Best Buy and just been having them mailed to me….it’s just better that way and i’m never in a hurry for them…I usually get two new cards every other month

5. April says

   March 27, 2015 at 10:27 am

   Does this also apply to Canadians?

   No offence to you Lura because you’re only posting and sharing what you know and have been told. I’ve been reading all of these things and your posts get me excited about how to get gems and other items yet you never mention that I can recall if it also pertains to Canada. Maybe it would be more helpful to everyone who comes to your site for information if you started off with something like, “This ONLY Applies to Residents in the USA”. That way Canadians and people in other countries can skip the articles.

6. MomsBassetHound says

   March 27, 2015 at 10:39 am

   April #6 – The 2nd paragraph from the article above……..

   To gift Gems to a friend, first buy an EA Card at Walmart.com. Two things to note here: this is a digital purchase so you will not receive a physical card and EA Card PIN codes can only be redeemed by players residing in the United States.

   Suz

7. TigerWoodsBstEvr says

   March 27, 2015 at 11:32 am

   I totally understand what Lura had mentioned before about Pogo citing specific legal issues with respect to not being able to “buy” Gems for other members or friends through the site, and that makes perfect sense, for security reasons. What I can’t understand is, why not just have a Gem transfer box, with a password screen to enter that would be a different password than the one we use for everything else! In other words, if I have already bought 1000 Gems, and I want to “transfer”, 100 Gems to Mom’s(Suz), I would go into the “Gem Transfer Screen” (New), and would have to type my other password to get in, and then, it would have a box to enter the number of Gems, I wanted to transfer (100), the second box….would look just like the one’s we currently gift from, where we can only select one name from our friends list at a time to transfer(MomsBassettHound), along with a message if you wanted to type one in, “Here’s a little something for you to have some fun with Suz…enjoy!:)…Tiger” and then a save(not send button). Then it would return to the main screen, and once both of these were completed, you would hit the send button, and it would show you a box to confirm, where you could hit yes, and it would transfer the 100 Gems immediately to Suz, and she would get a gift that would basically be a message that would resemble a certificate showing 100 Gems…that were already added to her Gems acct with the message, if the user selects no at the confirmation screen, it would come back and you could edit either of the two areas, or cancel the transaction completely! I can’t see how this would have any legal issues at all. In this case, we’re just “transfering” not purchasing, so no form of payment is subjugated by the 3rd party involvement, nor can they get to any credit card information on this newly created area of the site. Just remembering in Poker Sites from the past, that we legally used to be able to transfer money to another player…as there was a transfer screen for such. I believe as is with some written laws, it’s all in the wording! 🙂 Not sure they have looked into this or not, and am speculating, but perhaps the site just wouldn’t want to spend the time and effort, and is not a legal issue, if you set it up in the manner I represented, and it wasn’t done via a “Purchase”?

8. Lura says

   March 27, 2015 at 12:40 pm

   April (#6): one way to test this is to go to the EA Card redemption page and select one of the two choices (gems or Club membership):

   https://www.pogo.com/action/pogop/codeclaim/retailcard/landing.do

   If you’re restricted, it’ll give you this message:

   

9. MomsBassetHound says

   March 27, 2015 at 1:10 pm

   Tiger #8 – Thanks for the gift 🙂

   Pogo would never implement something like that for a couple of reasons. The one that jumps out at me is someone trying to send gems to a person that has a common name with numbers behind it. When typing it in they hit a wrong key and the gems go to the wrong person. The person who received the gift spends them and when Pogo is notified of the error there is no way to get them back….person has spent them and can’t charge them for something they didn’t order. The person who sent them wants their gems back, even though it was their error. Not everyone uses the friends list to gift items, some type the names in. I don’t, unless the person isn’t on my friends list.

   Suz

10. Gwen says

    March 27, 2015 at 8:06 pm

    For a 20.00 game card you get 275 Pogo Gems
    I’d rather gift my friend things then use this option

11. TigerWoodsBstEvr says

    March 27, 2015 at 9:07 pm

    Gwen – It’s much cheaper to buy Gems through the site then via the Game Cards…you get more Gems for the money you spend! 🙂

    Suz – That’s why there’s a confirmation page, and if the user that is sending it, makes a mistake after that, they really can’t cry foul. The safeguards are put into place for that reason. I totally agree, you won’t get them back, nor would we ever in the Poker sites either, and honestly, even in gifting, I’m not saying I’m perfect, but never made a mistake in gifting to the wrong person, or the wrong gift etc., even without a confirmation page 🙂 I see your point, but think you have to put a system in place that will work for the majority, not for the .01% that will make an error, which I’m certain when it comes to transfering Gems, they’ll even be more cautious and double check prior to hitting send, and using the confirmation button that I was suggesting…just a thought 🙂 (Smile!). I think the site should stipulate that though, that in order to make a Gems transfer, the person has to be on your friends list, whether you add them temporarily or decide to keep them on your list. You can always remove them, and add them back later, but just trying to make it easier on the site, so they don’t have to program an entirely knew drop-down box for selection….and the messages for gifting. Just pick that one and use it(just for ease in programming and getting it out there), instead of having 4 ways to do it, otherwise it will take Pogo 5 years or some other excuses to say “No” 😉 LOL

12. MomsBassetHound says

    March 27, 2015 at 9:32 pm

    Tiger #12 – I’ve been here for almost 11 years with this name, and from 1999 on another name. I don’t care if there were 10 screens to confirm, there would still be people who didn’t bother to read any of them and then figure out they made a mistake. Trust me on this 🙂

    Suz

13. dpa572 says

    March 27, 2015 at 9:55 pm

    Isn’t this equal to the analogy used in hiking, where you only go as fast as the slowest person in the group? (or as far up the trail). Not to say there may be some slow hikers in pogo or anything… .

14. TigerWoodsBstEvr says

    March 27, 2015 at 10:44 pm

    Suz – I totally agree with you…don’t think we’re agreeing to disagree.or vice versa…you’re going to have people that will mess up( even if you put 1000 screen’s in, we’re human)…that’s a given, but don’t you think you live with that bc that’s a very small %, and the concept should be about making the site better for the very vast majority. People really want the flexibility and ease, and cost effectiveness of being able to transfer Gems(not the expense and hassle of running to Gamestop, Walmart or spending more money, etc..), so why not make it happen,? Instead, let’s find some minutia “fly in the ointment excuse” because a very small % will mess up, they mess up in other things, do we drop those thing? Of course not! 🙂 What happens when a user buys 1000 Gems instead of whatever the lowest amount is on the site, did the site drop the ability to buy Gems? Of course not! 🙂 It satisfies the majority, and they deal with the small % that will make the errors.
    The comment below yours Suz, whoever wrote it would be impossible to create a situation/scenario that works for everyone, (so why would you single mine out when Pogo doesn’t have 1 that works for 100% on anything else?) as I can paint a scenario for the things that user thinks is 100% fullproof , where you could, and I could do the same thing, and tell you why it doesn’t work for a certain individual…so should we drop those things as well….might as well take down the site, with that attitude? 🙂

15. CJ says

    March 28, 2015 at 3:13 am

    The excuses for not allowing gifting are weak, after my experience in other games. In World of Warcraft, you are able to gift game time and digital items (pets and mounts). Steam allows you to gift almost any game to anyone. Same for Humble Bundle. EA is just being lazy not implementing proper systems for gifting gems. It could be done if they really want to.

    Yes, some people will make mistakes when gifting by entering the wrong info, but couldn’t the same be said for subscriptions, which we *are* allowed to gift others? If I had to guess, I’d assume it has more to do with it being more problematic to control people gifting gems to people outside of certain regions. They could do it, but I’m assuming someone did a cost-benefit analysis and came to the conclusion the cost and difficulty of implementing a system with the restrictions they want would cost more than they’d make. My guess is that it’s also done to prevent people from making tons of free accounts to get free gems from things like the surveys or just the default free gems you get and gifting them to their own “main” account. I still don’t think that’s a reason it shouldn’t be done, but it’s EA, and they’re going to do what they want. They’ve shown that on numerous occasions with other games (Sim City, The Sims franchise, for starters), and I have no hope for a change now.

16. TigerWoodsBstEvr says

    March 28, 2015 at 9:59 am

    CJ – Those are excellent points, couldn’t agree more, and would add, even if let’s say I have 4 accounts, and wish to transfer Gems from one to the other, I still paid for those accounts which are registered under my name. I don’t see any problem with doing that, it just keeps me from having to buy Gems for multiple accounts…by transferring could buy 4000 under one account or just even one transaction at 1000, and spread them out to the others as an example, but honestly I have some friends within Pogo, who either do not have access to a Credit/Debit card…on a consistent basis..due to personal reasons or just feel like it would be a nice gesture for some of my friends who don’t readily have access to Gems, to be able to give them Gems as opposed to what I typically gift, i.e. Albums(they can never get anything from Scrabble as an example) bc of legal/contractual issues) but if they had Gems they could(and could they use cash and run down to Gamestop and buy them..of course!), and Badges as an example, but I can’t tell you how many people try the Survey for Gems thing (including myself), and for whatever reason, do not qualify, after going thru some lengthy process of filling those things out. In either case, it would be nice to have the ability let’s say in my case of not having to go buy an EA card for $20 per card(or multiple one’s), and then, giving those codes out to my friend(s), for them to get gems. It’s not only inconvenient, but definitely costs more money per Gem(more revenue though…but really think it’s a supply and demand issue, ultimately they will sell less Gems overall bc of the inflexibility doing this) versus obtaining via the site and my time as well, for example. With respect to your other points, I completely agree and we can call it laziness and/or perhaps just not or ever was or ever will be a priority(if they can make more money – EA…they own Pogo…by having us buy the cards…what would give them any incentive to add a Gem transfer system…my belief is they would sell more Gems….as sometimes I actually got lazy and took me time to get around to buying those cards…and guess what….I would have gifted more Gems if I was able to buy them on the site to my friends versus having to go through the hassle every time of having to go get the cards bc I wanted to make their day so they could enjoy the same benefits and either gift other or buy Gem related Pogo items)…and not one of them ever asked me…can you get me Gems…LOL…just something I thought would be nice to do for a friend, either way they seem to find it, and as you can see not with just this topic I really believe members become institutionalized into acceptance(I can’t say I’ve never done that with respect to other sites and even things within Pogo, I’m probably institutionalized to some extent, and although nobody readily wants to admit it, I will!) (and find excuses to back up the site – succumb) when let’s say you and I have come from other places where this transfer process is a routine issue, and can’t understand at all why it should or would be any different! Heck in Poker(if you want to talk about using legal issues-they found a way to deal with it(on every site(and it didn’t take them 100 years to implement it), we had people from all over the world, not just in the US(no restrictions and that was real money being transferred)…with no limit to the amount in your account…they had some way to convert US into the other currencies, but I don’t know how they did it…they just did…we’re just the users and shouldn’t have to tell them what to do…that’s there job…geez…to funny…lol!), but that can be easily handled as well, think as you pointed out the cost effectiveness(“laziness”), would also have to include the element of programming, which…wow…can you imagine…LOL…can’t exclude having a S/W programmer or two take a week (if that) to implement/beta-test a change to what should have been done at least 10 years ago…this is almost an early 2000’s change, but really should have been part of the original launch at minimum of Club Pogo IMHO(as humble as it may be) (Smile!). lol