Gift Receipts - A sneaky sale tactic?

I bought my wife an unusual photo frame for €20 I thought she liked from Next on the 24th December (Panic buying as ordered gifts were delayed), and got a gift receipt with it. She liked it alright, but asked if it was ok to exchange it for something else as she has loads of frames she hasn't gotten around to using yet.

I went with her as she selected a replacement for the frame, a wall mirror, and went to the cash desk. They took the gift receipt and scanned it - the refund amount was €5 as the frame was now in the sale! Now my wife would have no way of knowing that from the gift receipt, but I had kept the original in my wallet and showed that to the sales assistant in order to get the correct refund.

I haven't seen this before, but I would have assumed that the barcode on the gift receipt would have been for the amount paid, not for the amount the item is now selling at. If this is not the case then shops must make quite a bit on the difference when customers return presents during the sales and then have to make up the cost for whatever it is they want.

Anyway I thought it was an interesting thing to take note of!

This also happened to me in Kilkenny Shop on Nassau Street. I bought a present for someone, they happened to get two of same, so I brought my one back to the shop. The gift receipt was in the bag so that's what I gate the assistant, once again I got told that the item had been reduced and the reduced price was coming up. I explained that the gift receipt showed it was purchased before the item was reduced and eventually got the full amount back. This incident made me wary of getting a gift receipt for anything else - I also had assumed the full price would have been displayed once the receipt was scanned.