Question: We got a Roy’s gift card, and it was no good. How embarrassing! We had received it as a gift. Please clarify so that others don’t find themselves in this spot.
Answer: Roy Yamaguchi’s eponymous restaurants in Hawaii honor only gift cards bought from restaurants or websites under his control, a limitation explained on royshawaii.com (which links to royyamaguchi.com):
“We regret to inform you that the company that now owns and operates the Roy’s restaurants on the mainland has decided to stop reimbursing the Hawaii operation for their gift cards. As a result of their decision it isn’t possible for us to redeem gift cards sold at Roy’s mainland restaurants, from roysrestaurant.com, from Costco, or any other potential gift card seller. We can only accept gift cards that have been sold from a Hawaii restaurant or from royshawaii.com,” it states.
There are more than a dozen Roy’s-branded restaurants throughout the United States that are not controlled by Yamaguchi, who sold his stake in those locations years ago. He maintains control of six Roy’s in Hawaii, plus restaurants with other names.
You didn’t say where the gift card you tried to use came from, but we received similar complaints over the holidays from people who said they had purchased discounted gift cards online; they had apparently failed to read the fine print.
On Costco.com, for example, the “product details” for a Roy’s promotion (two $50 gift cards for $79.99) state that the cards are not valid at Hawaii locations (or in Pebble Beach, Calif.). On roysrestaurant.com, sales between Nov. 11 and Dec. 31 qualified for a $20 bonus card for every $100 gift card purchased. The fine print on that site states that the cards are “valid at participating mainland locations; excluding Pebble Beach. Not valid in Hawaii, Guam or Japan.”
None of the money paid for those gift cards goes to Roy’s Hawaii, said Michael Webber, president of Roy’s Hawaii. “We do not benefit from any of those sales,” he said.
The separate companies used to honor each other’s gift cards, but that financial arrangement ended more than a year ago. “We’ve tried to inform our customers as directly as we can,” he said.
Webber said Hawaii staff emphasize to anyone who buys a Roy’s Hawaii gift card that it cannot be used on the mainland; each card comes with a note spelling that out. Anyone who “somehow missed our strong messaging” and bought a gift card here intending to use it on the mainland can return the unused card for a refund, he said.
From the calls we’ve received, however, that doesn’t seem to be the problem. Rather, we heard from people who bought cards elsewhere intending to use them here.
Webber said he was told by Costco last year that it doesn’t physically stock mainland-Roy’s gift cards in its Hawaii stores. However, they are available for sale online.
Auwe
Flabbergasted wrote Tuesday that after a traffic lane cleared, “I blasted my horn at you. You deserved it.” No circumstance other than an emergency deserves a honk of the horn. The situation was over, and the honking served no legitimate purpose. Flabbergasted did the wrong thing out of frustration. — Quiet fan
Mahalo
This is to thank the gentleman who saw me falling down on the roadside. I was dizzy for a while, and he picked me up and kind of wiped the rain off my shorts. I asked him where he came from, and he said he saw me from across the street and rushed over. He was very helpful (I only got a bruise on my knee), and thanks to his assistance I didn’t bump my head. I’m sorry I didn’t get his name, but many thanks to him and may the good Lord bless him. — Charles O.
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