I ran into a snag trying to load my Amazon gift card balance with prepaid American Express gift cards. I learned what went wrong and was able to correct it, so I hope this article will help you get it right the first time.
The ideal way to use the gift card is to add it as a payment method in Amazon, then use the "Reload your gift balance" function to convert your Amex gift card to Amazon credit. Then if you need to make purchases that would be split between your gift card balance and your default payment method, it will go without a hitch.
The caveat at the time of this writing is, when you add the gift card as a payment method, Amazon will validate the card by requesting a $0.10 auth on it with the issuing bank, which will lock that amount, leaving you $0.10 less than the full amount of the card that you can reload your gift balance with.
That said, if you have a gift card for $100 and you want to use it on Amazon, you're really going to reload your gift balance with $99.90 instead of $100.00
Steps to load your American Express gift card into Amazon:
- Add your card as a payment option in Amazon
- Log into Amazon
- Navigate to Account | Your Payments
- Click on the "Wallet" tab if not already there.
- Under the "Cards & accounts" section, click the "Add a payment method" option
- Under the "Add a New Payment Method" section in the right pane, under "Credit or debit cards", click the "Add a credit or debit card" button.
- Enter the card information
- Uncheck the "Set as default payment method" button
- Click the "Add your card" button
- Make sure it was successful
- Verify the hold Amazon placed on your gift card by going to the Amex Gift Card Balance website. NOTE: This can take up to 15 minutes to appear...
- At time of this writing, my auth hold was $0.10, but your mileage may vary depending on when you attempt it. If you confirm the amount on the Amex website, you will know how much to deduct from the full amount when reloading your Amazon gift balance.
- UPDATE 2022-12-09: Amazon didn't apply the $0.10 after 15 minutes of adding the card as a payment option in Amazon. It waited until I executed step 3 below (purchasing the "Amazon Reload"). I made the mistake of trying the full amount since I hadn't seen the $0.10 hold. Amazon accepted the purchase, but being suspect, I went back to the Amex Gift Card Balance site and looked at the transactions again. The $0.10 Pending Transaction immediately appeared. So I get to contact Amazon and tell them to cancel and try again with the $0.10 deducted. Lame.
My recommendation is to just proceed to Step 3 and immediately load the balance assuming you won't be able to use the $0.10 - Reload your gift balance on Amazon
- Navigate to Account | Your Gift Card Balance
- Click the "Reload your Balance" button
- Enter the adjusted amount in the "Enter an amount" textbox (in our example of a $100 gift card with a $0.10 hold, you would enter $99.90)
- Select the American Express "credit" card under "Your credit and debit cards"
- Click the orange "Reload $99.90" button
- You will get the message that the order is being processed and should receive an email a few minutes later confirming that the balance is reloaded.
12 comments:
Thank you so much for sharing this! So helpful. I hate when I get close to the end of a gift card and it doesn't cover the full purchase. This has made life easier.
I'm happy this helped you @Jessica!
Used your instructions but it didn't work. Any other helpful hints?
@Gina: What kind of symptoms/error messages did you encounter while trying the instructions?
I entered my gift card information in Amazon several hours ago and don’t see any deduction from my balance. Does it take awhile? Also, on the Amazon site it asks for a name in the card, since it is a gift card there is no name, but since one is required I entered my name. Is this correct?
@Janet: my cards usually said "MERRY CHRISTMAS" on them. I entered them with that as the name.
The hold showed up within 5 minutes of me entering it into Amazon if I recall correctly.
Did you ever see the hold for you? If not, then I imagine you can use the entire amount on Amazon for loading your gift card balance.
So what happens with the 10 cents. Who gets that?
@Anonymous: I believe the hold expires after a while and it just stays on the card. I'm not sure.
Thank for that detailed report. That is exactly my experience except they told me they would return the $0.10 which has not yet happened. I guess you just have to give up the $0.10 to buy the Amazon gift card. I wonder how many millions of people they took $0.10 from?
That would certainly add up, though I don't believe Amazon is keeping the $0.10. I think it is just used as an "authorization" to validate the card. It eventually gets freed back up and you may be able to add it later when it does. I have not tried, so I can't say for sure.
If you try it, please let us know how it goes! Wait 7-10 days after the initial loading of the rest of the card. Hopefully the "Check your balance" site will show when the authorization is gone. Best of luck!
The $0.10 hold will expire and go back to your card, but if you try to do it again you'll still be unable to use that 10cents because the validation step will always happen, even if you added the card a long time ago. I've had 5 of these gift cards and I've tried every permutation of adding it, waiting for the hold to go away, reloading , or immediately using etc that there is. No way to get that last 10 cents.
Thanks @Teej for the clarification! Most helpful.
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