I can't activate minecraft gifted code

Me and my irl friend wanted to play Minecraft together, she kinldy wanted to gift it to me the game. We BOTH live in the same place, in Moldova. She bought it via Moldova card, we literally live in the same region, but when I'm trying to activate the code it keeps giving an error that "it was bought in a different region". The worse is that she CANT EVEN REFUND THIS KEY, there's no such an option for a gift in the menu. And now we stuck being scammed for ~$30, without a game and an ability to even refund a gift getting an error about DIFFERENT REGION while we literally live nearby.
I've seen it's possible to resolve the problem through the support and I hope it's true. Either would be really cool to find solution to activate the key, or if there are no – at least refund money spent on it.