Take the current offereing for the Wii and WiiFit bundle with a free $50 gift card.

You have to put the Wii, the WiiFit and the $50 gift card in your cart. Once in the checkout process the total amount will be discounted $50 (the cost of the card) but since the order still includes the purchase of a gift card you cannot pay for the order with a gift card.

This also eliminates the built in profit from the promo. You can buy the deal and sell the item at regular price or slightly below. You will profit the $50 gift card. If you sell for $20 below retail you still profit $30 which is not bad. You could buy 6 of these deals and then use the 6 gift cards to buy a 7th. The 7th deal would be free from the profit of the gift cards.

Almost all gift cards have terms saying you cannot purchase other gift cards with them. Some merchants will let this rule slide if their system will accept the payment type. I use Giant Eagle gift cards to buy Staples gift cards and then use the Staples gift cards to buy eBay gift cards. Just this past weekend Staples decided they will enforce the terms now, and not allow me to purchase eBay cards with their gift cards.

I am confused--was the OP trying to purchase a gift card using a gift card or an actual item that had a gift card promotion attached to it? If so, just buy the gift card in a separate transaction.

@LightningUsagi: The point of this article was that the TOS were not intended for situations like this, so they were asking for any unique ideas to get around the computer system that's enforcing the TOS. And actually, the article does state the TOS in plainer terms: "You get it, Amazon doesn't want you to be able to transfer your gift card simply by buying another one for someone else with the one you got."

@katstermonster: If they had so plainly stated the TOS, why were they asking for a workaround, then?

@mobiuschic42:

Apparently I can give the GC to anyone I want (asked them after it was mentioned above) and anyone can use a GC code before it's entered into a particular account. But that just means that if I (B) had gotten a GC (or email with GC code as I have in the past) from A, I could just forward it on to C, and there on to D,E,F, etc. - So the wholething is moot, at least in my purchase case, there's a record to trace, my account and my CC#. So yeah, they might claim fraud protection or whatever, but I'm not seeing it flesh out in that form.

@MostlyHarmless: Yeah, I feel really bad about it because he's disgustingly smart and a really good engineer. And then I feel less bad because he's now my ex...heh.

@lmarconi: There's a reply button on the lower right of each comment. In fact, you just used it to reply to my comment. So you could have and should have just replied to them, since, you know, it was directed at them.

That's cute, that little smiley face you threw at me to try to make me look like the bad guy. Here's mine! :)

I do appreciate your treating me like a five year old.

also for the record, I rewrote this post a few times as well. My first one was a lot meaner : )

@acvicari: In this situation, it appears as if the Amazon CSR understood what the problem was, probably would have helped if she could but was unable to. What about in situations where the B&M store computers are just as stupid as the Online retailers:

[www.simplydumb.com]
[consumerist.com]

Or receipt checking as a theft deterent. Honestly, if you go to Costco (or WalMart, or Home Depot or...), and purchase 2 full carts of product, and the receipt checker looks at your receipt for 5 seconds...how good a job of reviewing the receipt are they doing...not very, so what is this stupid policy trying to prevent?

If multiple small gift cards can be used to purchase a large one, law enforcement may not be able to track the money efficiently like they can when the money has to pass through the major credit cards.

And keep in mind, there are some expensive things on Amazon that would make good bribes....

See also:
[moneycentral.msn.com]
[www.philadelphiafed.org]

@katstermonster: I wasn't trying to reiterate the article, just point out that there wouldn't be a workaround since it went against Amazon's terms for gift cards.

@coren:

Wooo, back the truck up... You can transfer these things? do tell - OP

OP here.

I sent Amazon an email reiterating my concerns. I did get a reply Monday morning from a Sunday email (that's a +) but the outcome was the same. This rep didn't even bother recognizing it might just be an unforseen result of programming.

"From your message, I understand you'd like to purchase the $75.00 gift card with other items in your cart on a single order and you'd like to apply the $30.00 gift card balance available in your account.

I'm sorry to inform that if you do have gift cards in your shopping cart when you place your order, you cannot pay for that order with another gift card or a gift card balance on your account. Gift cards can only be used to pay for eligible items. You can read more about that on our Gift Cards Fine Print page here:

www.amazon.com/help/gc#fineprint

If you wish, you can place the order for merchandise and gift cards and use any other eligible payment method for the order. If you do wish to use a gift card or gift card balance to pay for your order, you'll need to remove the $75.00 gift card placed in your shopping cart from the order.

But, In order to take advantage of the $75 gift card promotion, you need to purchase the $75.00 gift card added to your Shopping Cart along with the item when the promotion is in effect, otherwise the Gift Card offer will not apply.

Therefore, I'd suggest you to place an order for these 2 items together with any other eligible payment method and you can certainly use your gift card funds on your next order."

It seems to me the conclusion they need me to draw is that when we buy a gift card, lock in a future purchase with their store and preemtively pay them for something that they don't have to remove from their inventory, allowing them to add our amount to the free interest generating pile, we're really supposed to cosider the amazon balance a discount they are giving us the privledge to use and therefore subject to the cannot-be-combined-with-other-offers restrictions that abound in the coupon world, as opposed to the cash that was paid up front for that gift balance.

Wow, this is a lose lose for Amazon, not only am I reconsidering my purchase, but I'm thinking about my potential gift recipients getting denied the use of their gift in the same way, and now I'm much less likely to Buy these gift cards... go checks?

Just a hint: if you get paid more than I do because of a fellowship that you don't deserve, that caused one of my friends to not be able to get his Ph.D. for lack of funding...don't complain to me about only getting paid once a month instead of every 2 weeks.

@katstermonster: Is there a paticular reason that you're in this mood, or is it "just a case of the Mondays - the snappy version"?

@YardanCabaret: I have seen grocery stores that let you buy gift cards with a gift card (useful on those "points" deals === spend $100 and get points for a free turkey, for example, You just keep rolling the gift card everytime you visit). You can also buy other merchants giftcards at Walgreens (at least last time I checked). It was a great way to turn rebates into gas cards (but they ended the rebate program).

A lot of the rationale has to do with how the registers are programmed.

@katstermonster: I thought so too, but I enjoyed it.

A lil snark surely livens up a drab Monday morning.

(Not to say my comments are always useful...they aren't. But they don't PRETEND to be useful.)

"A great deal pops up up that you'd like to take advantage of; Amazon is selling a computer and discounting it by throwing in a free gift card...Unfortunately, since a computer application really runs the show at Amazon, you can't apply your own gift card balance to a purchase that includes a gift card" (Emphasis mine.) Reading is fun!

Yes, it is different. The people at brick-and-mortar stores are told what the policies are (we hope). They're not supposed to override them. In principle, though, they could, if they understood that an exception was warranted. It might get them fired, and it might be really unlikely that they'd do it, but they could.

A computer program is not a person. If the Amazon system is set up in such a way as to not allow this transaction and to not give a means for employees to override, there is NOTHING the employee can do, no matter how much he or she wants to, and no matter whether he or she is willing to make an exception to a policy.

I wonder if there is a way for a CSR to get around this though. Maybe place an order w/ the gift card for something else, immediately cancel it and credit the account, then use the credit to make the purchase the OP wants? It all depends on how Amazon's system is set up.

"These online stores are perfect bureaucracies; they have frustrating and arbitrary rules and conditions that even their representatives can't explain or defend, but we can't even blame them for being cold hearted human beings... we are expected just to accept their binary limitations."

So this is different from brick & mortar stores like WalMart, Home Depot, Gamestop and others that make up seemingly stupid policies that don't work and store employees and managers are powerless to override the policy?

SirWired

@67alecto:
Safeway allows you to buy gift cards with gift cards. My sister buys people Safeway gift cards so that they can go to the little Safeway "giftcard mall" that they have in the stores. She calls it the "choose your own giftcard giftcard."

@LightningUsagi: I agree. They are trying to buy a gift card with a gift card. Doesn't matter if the gift card they are buying is part of a larger purchase - no companies will let you do that.

So Patrick did call customer service? And they still said no? I think we need additional information here. I don't think one should be quick to raise a pitchfork at Amazon when there's not a lot of information.

Amazon customer service has always been able to "bend the rules" when it comes to providing good service. For instance, I had ordered a DVD set from BN.com the day of release and I then got an email that it was delayed - well, I wanted to have it by that Friday because some friends and I had planned a marathon. I call Amazon and ask them whether they would price match BN.com and get it to me by Friday. The CSR told me that normally they would not price match, but in this case, they would. She would make a note on my account that I needed a price adjustment, I would just have to go through the whole checkout process, call back and give them the order number.

There's probably not a workaround for it. Amazon's gift card terms state "Gift Cards cannot be used to purchase other Gift Cards, such as Amazon.com Gift Cards, Target Gift Cards, or Borders Gift Cards." In essence, the purchase that you're making includes a gift card, so you won't be able to use yours to buy it.