A couple of things:
Did you get a confirmation email from KOAGiftcards? Did you check to see which email address you'd entered for your friends? Since you received the card immediately, I tend to give KOA the benefit of the doubt.
You could easily have sent it to yourself originally by putting your information in the Recipient boxes.
While it's a small excuse, you should recognize the time of year when these things happened, most employees are using their vacation days toward the end of the year and many companies are operating on skeleton staffing levels.