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moho.hi
Explorer
Status: New Idea

I thought it would be fun to gift CATAN VR, while on sale, to friends and family for Christmas.  My mother loves Settlers of Catan and her kids live all over the USA, so this seemed like an excellent gift idea.  Neither my Mom nor my brother have Quests but they are both interested and at least this would motivate them to setup an account.  All-in-all, I purchased 7 gift apps for friends and family, some had Oculus accounts and some did not.

The whole thing was a fiasco.
It seems to me that Oculus is really missing the boat on this.  I thought having an app in the account as soon as they made it might incentivize family members to buy Quests in conjunction with the double referral benefits for both parties ($60 app credit) until 12/31/21.

It ended up with hunting for emails and back and forth phone calls, and no way for me to check and answer simple questions.

1. The current system does not let you see who you gifted to, which is nuts from a customer experience perspective, imo.  It ends up I gifted apps to to the same email and consequentially missed sending one to my mother altogether as I had no way of checking this information.

Note: Support can provide this info but you have to wait to get through, then really press your issue, and then have a fully verify your account, which consists of the last 4 digits of your payment method, your full name, and the last app you purchased.  They can refund them right then and there as well, which is what I did.

2. The website doesn't show if the recipient has redeemed it, but you can see this in the mobile app.  And honestly, how useful is this if you don't know who the purchase history entry is associated with.

3. If the recipient doesn't redeem the gift in 14 days it credits you back the money, which is cool, unless you purchased it on a good sale and now you have a disappointed gift recipient or you have to  buy it again at full price.

4. The email address must be the same as the Oculus account.  Why can't it just give them a code in an email? 
This starting point seems flawed to me.  Assuming that everyone already has an Oculus account, when a key objective of Facebook is to get more people using Oculus seems to be a very short sighted approach.

5. There is no way to fix a mistake other than to ask for refund.

This feels like a tunnel vision type of problem. The system designers only see the existing workflow and ignore that the market, the people they want to attract as customers, have expectations for alternatives.