About Buying Gift Cards In Store

The shopping season is here, and there are more and more AMEX/Chase Offer deals as well. Buying a store’s own gift cards or third-party gift cards at the eligible merchant is a great way to get good value from an offer. For example, with an AMEX Best Buy Offer of $25 back on $250, you can go to a Best Buy store and buy Shell gas cards or Itunes gift cards. Buying gift cards can also trigger the offer. That effectively gives you a discount on gas or Apple purchases. However, buying gift cards can also lead to quite a few unexpected issues, and sometimes fixing them can take a lot of time.

In this article, I’ll summarize the various problems that I and my friends have encountered when buying gift cards in store, along with the solutions afterward, for everyone’s reference. If you’ve had a similar experience, feel free to share it in the comments.

Make Sure You Actually Use Them!

I put this first because in the US, a huge number of gift cards are simply forgotten by their owners. That’s one big reason merchants are so happy to issue gift cards: on the one hand, they get cash flow up front; on the other hand, many people forget to use them. That’s basically free money for the merchant.

In 2020, a CNBC survey estimated that Americans had $21Billion in unused gift cards.

Half of Americans currently own unredeemed gift cards or store credits according to a new survey from Bankrate. And that adds up to tens of billions in unused money.

The survey of over 2,600 U.S. adults found that the average person with unused gift cards is sitting on around $167 in free money. More than one-third of respondents with unused cards say they won’t use up all of the funds. When you don’t, the bank or retailer is happy to keep the money.


I recommend keeping all your unused gift cards together. For e-gift cards, create a txt file and record the code and pin, otherwise it’s very easy to forget about them. If a card can be loaded to an account, like Amazon or apple, load it as soon as possible so it can be used automatically from your account.

The Cashier Says “Cash/Debit Only”

This issue is actually pretty common. Compared with ordinary merchandise, gift cards are higher risk. Because gift cards often have large denominations and are easy to transfer, they are frequently abused in stolen credit card transactions. If something goes wrong and the credit card company doesn’t pay the merchant, the store that sold the gift card may end up taking a loss, and the cashier could also get dragged into the issue. If the transaction is done with debit or cash, naturally that risk is lower. Since the cashier doesn’t earn any commission anyway, they may simply choose the lower-risk option. In addition, some cashiers are not very familiar with the checkout system, and buying gift cards may require scanning a barcode and going through multiple steps, sometimes even requiring additional approval. To avoid the hassle, they may raise the barrier and try to discourage you. From a system perspective, though, third-party gift cards generally can be purchased with a credit card and do not require cash/debit payment. Visa gift cards are hard coded at a very small number of stores and cannot be purchased with a credit card there. So as long as the cashier knows how to do it and is willing to help, buying them is usually not a problem.

But if a cashier tells you this, the best approach is not to argue. Just switch to another line. Large supermarkets usually have several checkout lines. In my personal experience, younger cashiers, white cashiers, and male cashiers are more likely to allow the transaction. You can also chat a little during checkout to reduce their suspicion about you buying a $500 gift card. If the store has only one checkout lane, just come back at another time. There’s no need to keep arguing. Of course, if you need to buy it urgently, asking for a manager to ring you up or showing your ID can also work. Managers are generally more reasonable about this.

ID Check Issues

I recommend that if you’re going to buy gift cards, especially Visa gift cards, you should definitely bring your ID, state id, or driver license. When buying high-value gift cards, many cautious cashiers will ask to see your ID before allowing the purchase. For things like Visa gift cards, they may even ask you to fill out a form. Of course, if you don’t want to, you can just say you didn’t bring it or don’t want to fill it out, and leave. There’s no need to argue.

Not Properly Activated

Buying a gift card in store is mostly like buying regular merchandise, and it will normally appear on your final receipt. However, most stores will also print a separate activation receipt specifically for the gift card to confirm that it has been activated. Below is an activation receipt for a Google Pay gift card purchased at Walgreen. Generally speaking, having the activation receipt means the gift card was activated successfully. If you don’t get one, you can ask the cashier whether there should be one.

However, even if a receipt prints, activation can still fail. A friend in our reader group recently ran into this issue after buying Disney gift cards at Bed Bath and Beyond（BBB）. He bought several Disney gift cards in order to use the recent BBB 20% cash back Chase Offer. Although the activation receipts printed successfully after purchase, when he got home and tried to load them, he found that some of the Disney gift cards had not actually been activated. So he had to go through a long process:

  • Call Disney to confirm that the gift card had not been properly activated
  • Go to the BBB store, inform the manager that the card was not activated, and request a refund. The manager then called Disney, but they could not process the refund directly by phone, and instead asked him to email Disney gift card customer service
  • So he emailed Disney customer service

Charged Twice

This is something I personally experienced. I previously bought gift cards at Lowe's to use an AMEX offer, and I bought Amazon gift cards. At checkout, the printer malfunctioned and didn’t print either the receipt or the activation receipt. To make sure the card had been activated, the cashier replaced the paper and rescanned the gift card to check me out again. The second time went through fine, and both the receipt and activation receipt printed. But when I got home, I found that my AMEX card had been charged twice by Lowe's. At the time, I thought maybe the first one was just pending and would disappear when the transactions posted. But a few days later, both $100 charges had posted.

So I submitted a dispute for the first charge directly on the AMEX website and explained that it was a double charge. A few days later, however, AMEX actually denied the claim because Lowe's provided a record showing that I had made a purchase there that day. Well yes, I did make a purchase — the issue was that I was double charged. So I had to go to Lowe's and ask about it. The manager couldn’t really help and just told me to contact AMEX again. So I submitted the dispute once more and mentioned that Lowe's had already confirmed it was a double charge. Eventually, I was finally able to get the money back.

You Bought an Empty Card

If you buy a gift card and can’t use it when you get home, there are generally two possible reasons. First, the gift card was not properly activated, which we already discussed above. Second, the card may have been stolen, and that is something you really need to watch out for.

There are many ways gift cards can be compromised. The most common is that someone has already copied down the card number and Pin, then put the card back on the rack. Usually the card number is printed on the back of the card, while the Pin is covered by a scratch-off layer. A thief can scratch off the pin, record the card number and Pin, then cover it back up with something similar. Once you purchase the card and activate it at checkout, the thief will see that the card has been activated and immediately drain the funds from it. (There are programs that periodically check whether the card has been activated.)

So when buying a card, make sure to inspect the back carefully to see whether the pin area shows any signs of being scratched. If you’re not comfortable, you can ask the cashier to get a fresh card from behind the counter or from storage instead of taking one that has been hanging on display.

Another, more advanced method is often used with Visa/Master gift cards: copying the magnetic stripe and then recreating the card. I’m not entirely sure how that works in detail. Of course, the best way to avoid it is to check whether the packaging on the Visa gift card shows signs of being opened, or ask the cashier to get a new one from the back.

So I still recommend using the card as soon as possible after purchase, or loading it into the relevant account. If you unfortunately end up buying an empty card,

  • Contact the merchant right away to find out whether it was not activated or whether something else happened,
  • Then contact the company associated with the gift card to determine whether it was drained by fraud or whether it is just a temporary system issue. The merchant can often see where the card was used; if the location is not yours, then it was clearly stolen
  • Then contact your credit card issuer and be prepared to file a dispute if neither of the above two channels will refund you. After all, this also counts as receiving a product that does not match its description
  • If none of those three channels work, consider filing a BBB complaint or taking it to small claims court. If it actually gets that far, these companies will usually settle with you.

Self-Checkout

In fact, most gift cards can be purchased through self-checkout, though a small number require employee approval. If the transaction can be completed successfully, I strongly recommend checking out yourself, because it can save you a lot of judgmental looks. For example, at Target and Kroger, you can take the gift card to the self-checkout lane, scan it, enter the amount you want to load, and follow the steps. If the promo is something like buying a gift card and getting a Target gift card, just grab an empty Target gift card from the rack and scan it when needed to load it.

What you need to pay attention to here is making sure the gift card is actually activated, otherwise it can be pretty troublesome.

Split Payment Issues

If you have offers on multiple cards, the most convenient method is to split one purchase across several cards. That said, it’s still a good idea to be considerate when doing this, since sometimes there’s a long line behind you and it can feel awkward. Some cashiers also don’t really know how to do it. If you run into that situation, I’d suggest just letting it go rather than arguing. The steps for split payment are as follows:

  • First have the cashier scan everything you want to buy, including the gift cards
  • Then tell the cashier you want to split payment on multiple cards
  • Then tell them charge xxx on this card, and hand over the card
  • Then repeat
  • For the last card, say please charge the rest on this card
  • thank you very much

Of course, if the self-checkout system is good enough, you may also be able to split the payment there. I remember doing this before at toy r u, splitting one gift card purchase across 10 cards. Of course, there was nobody behind me, and after fiddling with it for a long time and finally making it work, I got out of there fast.

Conclusion

Although buying gift cards can come with some annoying issues, most of them are actually quite easy to solve once you know what to expect. Gift cards are big business in the US, and they are also a great tool for us to maximize offers and save or make money. Hopefully everyone can benefit from them.

If you’ve run into any problems or have any related experiences, feel free to share them in the comments!