Occasionally, you will find that your Amazon gift card may have been partially or completely used up.
With all the purchases people make on Amazon, it can be hard to keep track of who has used what gift card.
You need to know the amount available on your gift card to know if you have enough to make the purchase you want to make on your card.
Can You See Who Redeemed An Amazon Gift Card?
No, there is no way of seeing who redeemed an Amazon gift card.
For the privacy of their customers, Amazon does not give out information on individual orders unless you were the one to make the order.
Unless you have the card and order information, you will not be able to see who made a purchase with the gift card, what their purchase was, or when they purchased the item.
Amazon considers such information as private and personal to the purchaser.
While it may be a nuisance that you can’t find out who redeemed an Amazon gift card, it is actually for your own safety.
If such information were to be shared, anyone could find out your address, card information, or the purchases you are making.
Not protecting such sensitive information would lead to many different types of theft.
People would be able to figure out what is inside the packages patiently waiting on your porch and decide if they are worth stealing.
Instead, Amazon organizes purchase history by each account.
In order to use gift cards or make purchases on Amazon, you must have an account.
Once a gift card has been redeemed, the amount goes into the buyer’s Amazon account.
The purchase history and amount of money in the Amazon account can only be seen by the person the account belongs to.
Those who notice that their gift cards have missing amounts would want to check their own account first to see if the card was registered to their own account.
This is the only situation where you’ll see any purchase history.
If the purchase is not visible on your account, then the card was used by another account.
Try to remember if there was any chance you misplaced the gift card because someone could have taken it.
Why Is My New Gift Card Empty?
It isn’t unheard of for cards to have no balance, despite having just been bought from the store.
There are a couple of reasons that your gift card seems to have a lower balance than it originally had, ranging from technical errors to spamming and fraud.
One of the most common reasons that a gift card will be empty before you even use it is due to what happens while the card is being purchased.
If you notice that your gift card has no money on it, then the cashier who served you probably put in some of the gift card information incorrectly.
It could be as simple as clicking debit or credit instead of registering it as a gift card when checking your order out.
These situations are the easiest to fix.
All you need to do is take your card and receipt back in and have a customer service representative or manager review the card.
They’ll be able to check the balance on your card.
Sometimes, there are technical issues that cause cards not to be loaded when they are purchased.
In these situations, you will want to take your card and receipt to the store and explain that the card was never loaded.
There is no way to tell if the card wasn’t loaded properly due to human or technological error unless you notice that you have had this issue multiple times with multiple cashiers at a store.
If it is a frequent issue, then you will want to inform customer service or management about the problem.
It’s important that you speak up and inform a store about issues that they may be having with their gift cards.
It may be a sign for them to have their systems checked out or that they need to update their software.
Why Is My New Gift Card Used?
Gift card scams are happening everywhere you go, whether it is online or in physical stores.
Even as security gets tighter in many different stores, scammers have gotten smarter.
There are even some scammers who work for the stores that are selling you gift cards.
Before you go to purchase a gift card, the store and you could have already been scammed.
Make sure that you check the back of the gift cards if you can.
If you notice that the silver scratch-off strip isn’t fully covering the numbers, report this to the store and try to get a different gift card.
In situations where you can’t see the back of the gift card, check the back of the gift card right after purchasing it.
Any damage should be reported to the store.
Scammers will gather the numbers of gift cards and wait for them to be loaded.
Once the gift cards are loaded, they are used before you even get home to have the chance to use them yourself.
However, some scammers are able to get the codes without seemingly messing up the covering over the code.
If someone else purchased the gift card, you will want to ask them if they have the receipt or if they know the card’s activation code.
Additional information such as the date that they purchased the gift card will help determine what happened.
You may end up needing to call Amazon’s customer service in order to straighten out what happened.
By giving them information such as your name, shipping and billing address, basic gift card information, the date the card was purchased, and the activation code, Amazon will be able to determine if the code was stolen in-store.
However, Amazon has less than pleasing gift card terms and conditions.
Will Amazon Replace Stolen Or Scammed Gift Cards?
No, Amazon will not replace stolen or scammed gift cards.
In the “Risk of Loss” section of their gift card Terms and Conditions, Amazon states firmly that any gift cards that are scammed, stolen, or lost in any other way will not be replaced.
The security of a gift card is in the hands of the retailer and the customer.
When Amazon sells their gift cards to retailers, they are handing over the responsibility of keeping the gift cards safe to the retailers who are then distributing them to customers.
Amazon claims they are not responsible for any damages that come in your gift card or even your Amazon account.
It is up to the consumer to keep themselves and their information safe.
All Amazon can do in the case of a scam is to close down the account that stole the gift card.
If they have solid evidence of theft, Amazon will make all payments from the gift card void and investigate the account that used the card.
Whenever working with Amazon, you should expect that all responsibility of keeping your package safe belongs to you.
According to Amazon’s overall Conditions of Use, Amazon is only responsible for physical items as they are shipping the product to you.
Their responsibility ends after the package has left their hands.
Even though you may not want to communicate with Amazon after getting scammed out of one of their cards, you should inform them when there is a scammer.
This helps Amazon take steps towards trying to find the scammer.
The sooner Amazon finds out who is taking their customers’ money, the sooner Amazon can inform the proper authorities and have the scammer prosecuted.
This will prevent the scammer from making future purchases with the accounts that were used.
How To Keep Your Amazon Gift Cards Safe
There are a few tricks that you can use to keep your gift cards safer.
Whether it is a physical card or digital information, scammers want to trick you into giving them your Amazon gift card information.
This problem has become so common that Amazon has had to comment on each type of scam and identify the most common ones.
These are things that should be shared with anyone who makes online purchases, whether they’re young or old.
Scam callers have gotten more creative with the stories that they tell when trying to get their victims to fall for their tricks.
They’ll claim that they’re government agencies, private sections of companies, potential employers, or even claim to be your boss.
There have even been instances where scammers claimed that they were asking for money for COVID-19 relief funds or that there has been a family emergency and your family member needs the gift cards in order to get treatment.
They’ll claim you have unpaid taxes or whatever it takes to scare you out of your money quickly.
You should know that there will never be legitimate transactions that will force you to pay in gift cards, especially if it is one particular type of gift card.
In normal transactions, you should have multiple payment options.
Remember that Amazon gift cards can truly only be used on Amazon’s website.
You can’t use them at places such as Target or even your own bank’s website.
You should never pay someone in another brand’s gift card.
Any time you share gift card information with someone, you should know exactly who you are talking to.
You should already have known their name and relationship to you before even thinking about giving them any card information.
Should I Take Legal Action?
Yes, you should contact government organizations such as the Federal Trade Commission and your local police department.
You shouldn’t expect to get your money back, but you can at least help prevent other people from being scammed and help the scammer get caught.
The first step you should take after figuring out that you’ve been scammed is to report the fraud case to the Federal Trade Commission through ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
Even if you weren’t the one to spend the money, the Federal Trade Commission still wants you to report the fraud because it helps them find patterns and locations of scammers.
When you make your report, you will be asked to explain what happened.
Make sure to include details of any previous steps you have taken to figure out that you were scammed, such as going to the store where the gift card was purchased or any conversation that goes on between you and Amazon.
After you have given your statement, you will be taken through some steps to help keep you safer in your particular situation.
The Federal Trade Commission then takes the information that you give them and passes it along to the proper law enforcement partners who will investigate.
Once you’ve informed the Federal Trade Commission, they recommend that you also inform your state’s attorney general.
You can use the National Attorneys General Training & Research Institution’s website to file a complaint in reference to your scam case.
The person who lost money from the scam will need to file a local police report about the situation.
Any and all information on the matter should be given to your local police department, including where the gift card was bought and the fact that you made a report with your state’s attorney and the Federal Trade Commission.
Keep Your Gift Cards Safe
Amazon gift cards can make great gifts, but you should make sure that you choose gift cards that don’t seem to have been damaged or tampered with in any way.
There is no way of knowing who has redeemed your gift card once it has been used, and Amazon does not replace stolen or scammed cards.
The best thing you can do to ensure that your Amazon gift cards have not been tampered with would be to order digital gift cards through Amazon.
That ensures that there is no physical card to steal information from, and it limits the number of hands the card has to pass through.
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