The Pepper App, which is an app that sells gift cards to various merchants (and has no relation to our own Stephen Pepper) has either been down or not working properly for days (H/T: Doctor of Credit). Some users get a pop-up indicating that the app is currently not working, though others (including me) see no such messaging. Coin redemption is not available at all. I was able to pay for a gift card last night, but the app did not produce the gift card despite taking payment. It would be prudent to avoid Pepper until this is resolved.
Some users are getting the pop-up shown above indicating that Pepper is experiencing an unexpected outage that has made purchases and point redemptions “temporarily” unavailable.
However, I don’t see any such pop-up in my Pepper account. At first glance, the app appears to look and function as per normal with no pop-up messaging. However, there is no option to redeem coins to purchase a gift card, only the option to pay with a credit card.
I tested that last night by purchasing a $5 Walmart gift card. After checking out, the screen greyed and spun forever without producing a gift card. When I go to my transaction history, I can see the $5 transaction for a Walmart gift card, but there is no button to view the gift card or check the gift card balance (as there is for other past transactions). I did receive a receipt from Pepper via email:
And Pepper successfully charged my credit card:
However, Pepper has not produced a gift card.
That’s obviously very highly concerning. When Tim wrote late last year about the Pepper app instituting a 60-day inactivity expiration rule, he included his concerns about the long-term viability of the app:
The size of the daily discounts offered (14x on Amazon, 15x on Nike, 14x on Lowes) combined with the two-tiered timing of the payouts have made many folks nervous about how long it will stay solvent.
Stephen shared similar sentiments in his post about the Pepper Amex Offer a couple of months ago. I think anyone who has followed the huge discounts Pepper has offered on rarely-discounted or never-discounted gift cards has questioned how the business model could possibly be sustainable. The outage on the app is obviously hugely concerning, particularly for those who attempted to make gift card purchases in recent days, but it isn’t shocking.
It’s worth noting that I bought a gift card using coins a week ago and that purchase went through and the gift card still has its full balance. I’ve seen a couple of reports of more recent gift card purchases being zeroed out, though it is impossible to confirm those reports. Obviously, if you pay for a gift card and it never gets fulfilled, you could file a chargeback on your credit card. However, I’d probably give this a week to see how it shakes out before filing chargebacks in case this is just a case of the app being down for maintenance of some sort. Still, one would have expected to have seen a mass email by now from Pepper indicating what’s going on and when they expect to be back if there was an end in sight to the outage.
Update: Some users have reported receiving an email around the same time that this post published from Pepper. My wife and I both have Pepper accounts and neither of us have received the email, but at least one Frequent Miler team member received it. It reads as follows:
Hi [Name],
We know the recent outages have been frustrating, and we’re very sorry.
Our app is currently undergoing a planned upgrade as we transition to the new 2.0 version of Pepper.
During this time, the app may be temporarily down or have intermittent outages over the next couple of weeks.
Rest assured — your points are 100% safe, fully recorded, and will be redeemable in full once the system stabilizes.
Nothing is lost, and no action is needed on your end.
We’re doing everything we can to keep the downtime to a minimum and expect to have the app back online shortly.
Thanks for bearing with us as we make these improvements.
We’re excited to share the new and improved Pepper with you very soon.
Thanks again for being part of the Pepper community.
— The Pepper Team
Take that as you may. I’m glad to see some sort of recognition that there is a problem, but at the same time the ideal time to let people know of a planned outage is sometime before you plan for it to happen. If you have unused gift cards that you have purchased from Pepper, I would highly recommend going into your Transaction History and recording or taking screen shots of any outstanding gift cards and balances just in case you are later unable to access that information.
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