Gift cards/Amazon grift

[cbabe]

Hoping this is ok forum.

I was gifted an Amazon gift card.

First two purchases were fine.

Third purchase attempt the account was frozen.

Days of phone calls to customer service. They insisted everything was fine. Everything was not fine.

They finally exhausted me. I gave up.

No refunds on gift cards. No appeal.

So Amazon keeps the balance.

I’m not that special. I assume many others have been caught in this system.

Nice grift.

[Lifeafter70]

1. Do you know the amount remaing on the card

With some gift cards it will decline if your purchase exceeds the amount left on card. I'm a grocery clerk and see this all the time with these cards. I can usually get around it by putting in the amount left on card manually.

[Ferrets are Cool]

2. This

[Lifeafter70]

3. I see this with ebt cards too.

Fortunately our system allows us to look up the balance on those cards and have no problem processing with the split card option on our registers. With private gift cards the customer has to know the balance in order to process the purchase using split card, which allows me to enter an amount to be taken from card.

[cbabe]

4. Balance remaining is greater than the attempted purchase. Wish it was this easy.

[Lifeafter70]

5. I have seen that too

Unfortunately never found a way to solve that. It could be the card that is damaged either the strip or the chip. So it will not read correctly. Do you have the option of maually entering the card number? I have seen this for years and have always thought it to be theft by the companies that sell those cards and believe they know it. It has gotten better but still too many of these stories like yours.

[cbabe]

6. Good to hear I'm not crazy and there are others. Also, there is no physical card. All transactions are online.

[Lifeafter70]

7. I have only dealt with actual cards

Online accounts in reality should be easier to correct. Sorry this is not true for you.

Edit to add: you can file a complaint with the FTC. Don't know if this helps.

[cbabe]

8. I filed a complaint with my AG. They might take it on if enough others follow suit.