Voucher system needs relooking

About a month ago, my friend was going through a very tough time. I live in Cape Town and she's in Port Elizabeth (Gqeberha). I thought a gift voucher to spoil herself with would be a nice idea. The process was tedious: I went to Woolworths in Cavendish, waited in line at Customer Service, filled in forms, got issued with a gift card which they cut up 5 minutes later and was told they'd be phoning Baywest that afternoon after I told them about the urgency of getting the voucher to her. I walked out, happily thinking what a nice surprise this was going to be. I didn't think I was going to be the one to be surprised. I thought it odd that my friend never mentioned anything, so weeks later I asked if she'd received anything from Woolworths, but she just said that she didn't have an account with them. I emailed W and eventually got hold of someone after they'd neglected to leave a message when their calls were unanswered during working hours. Apparently they used an incorrect mail address, so they thought the deal was done. My concern is more that nobody followed up that nothing had been redeemed. Where are the checks and balances? If I hadn't asked my friend, I would never have discover that my gift had never been received and that I'd wasted R500. The worst was the phone call trying to explain what had happened and very little by ways of apology, in fact the follow-up email clearly wasn't checked before it was sent, so this is what I got after my telephonic conversation: "Thank you for your email regarding the gift card you purchased for your friend in Gqeberha. Please accept your apologies for the disappointment and inconvenience caused. Our Cavendish customer service team has been trying to get in touch with you without any luck. They have spoken liaised with the Baywest store customer service to contact your friend to resolve this matter."

This is really not what I expected from the Woolworths brand and I'm still unclear about whether or not my friend has received her voucher...either way it's too late now and if cancelling it was an option, I would've.