EXPIRED (for now) - Free £10 with Amazon Topup in-store. Spoiler alert: it doesn't work

EpicFishFingers

Or, as of right now it doesn't work and if it does get resolved, it was more effort than the tenner was worth.

From the expired list of deals, here's the MSE text about it:

EXPIRED
'Amazon Top Up - In Store' is a service where you can add funds directly to your regular Amazon account gift card balance at 'PayPoint' tills in over 20,000 UK stores, including Co-op, Sainsbury's, Tesco and newsagents (find your nearest – there's a decent spread nationwide).

If you use the service for the first time by 11.59pm on Sat 30 Jun, you can get a 'free' £10 credit when you top up £40+. There's another offer ending on the same day (see how to get £6 'free' Amazon credit), and if you want, you can claim both of them separately.

The normal funds you add are valid for 10 years, and can be used on most items sold by Amazon (not those sold by third party sellers and excluding gift cards), so this is effectively £10 free credit as long as you'll spend £40 at Amazon in the next decade.

You need to use the free £10 by 11.59pm on Tue 31 Jul – you can redeem it by ticking the 'Use your £10 promotional balance' box at the payment stage. There's no minimum spend when using your credit and if your purchase is more than a tenner, you can use the topped up gift card balance towards the rest.

How do I get the 'free' £10?

While you can obviously top up your balance online as normal, doing it that way will NOT get you this £10 freebie. Instead, you'll need to follow these steps...

1. You first need to get a barcode online to show at a PayPoint till. Log in, go via this Amazon link* and click 'Get your barcode'. If you're using a laptop or desktop computer, you can choose whether you want your barcode sent via text, or to print. If you're on mobile, the barcode will appear onscreen.

2. Go into your local PayPoint store (find your nearest), show your barcode at the till and top up by £40 or more. Amazon says you'll get an email within one hour confirming that you've qualified for £10 free credit. The £40 will be added instantly to your online gift card balance and the £10 credit will be displayed at the checkout for your next qualifying purchase. You're able to top up by £5-£250 per transaction.

If you don't receive the £10 credit, contact Amazon's customer service department*.

I've not used this service before so for the first time, I topped up with £40 (before the deadline, of course), but only received £40 in my account, rather than £50 as expected.

I emailed customer services and they said (I've cut out the irrelevant stuff like "thank you for using amazon" etc):

I understand that you've been informed get a free 10.00 GBP credit if youtop up by 40.00 GBP or more, but that you advised this isn't the case. I will explain everything to you and set things right.

I've checked your account and can see that your Current Balance is £40.00.

You can check your Current Balance at any time by going to the "View Balance" in the "Gift Cards & Top Up" section of Your Account, or clicking the following link:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/css/gc/balance/

Further, I can see that the 10.00 GBP Promotional credit is already added on your account.

Please note that this credit will only be visible when you place an order, it wont appear in the "Gift cards" section of Your Account.

Promotional credit must be redeemed at our website, towards the purchase of products sold and fulfilled by Amazon. Promotional credit can't be used to purchase Amazon.co.uk Gift Cards, items sold by third party Sellers including Warehouse Deals, products sold and distributed by Audible, against Kindle books, delivery costs, or against gift wrapping costs.

When you place a qualifying order, you'll be able to see that the value of your promotional credit has been deducted from the total cost. Any unused funds will be retained in your account to be used at a later date.

In this case, I kindly request you to place a new order for the items sold and fulfilled by Amazon, so that the credit of 10.00 GBP will be applied on your new order.

You can view the terms and conditions for promotional credit here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201895970

So basically I need to by something before it shows up.

I made one order of £25, which was covered entirely by the card, and now there's £15 remaining in balance on the cars. I got to this balance via the link provided by Amazon customer service, as instructed.

Also I'm now making a second order, of value over £15, and of course in the checkout, I've only go £15 taken off the value of the order by the gift card, NOT £25 as the Amazon customer service rep implies.

All the products from both the first and second orders are sold and fulfilled by amazon.

I've just replied to the cs rep via email to tell them this but when I went to hit "no" on the feedback in their first email to answer their question "did this resolve your problem", a new chrome tab opened and an amazon website loaded which told me I'd already provided feedback on this issue - which I hadn't done.

So no doubt because of that last issue, my email reply has gone adrift as the amazon cs rep thinks the issue has been resolved and the email address is probably not being monitored anymore - Again, I never said it has been resolved and never touched those buttons before.

But even if they do get back to me, this has been much more effort than the free £10 is worth.

So if you'd like to take advantage of this, your luck might be better. But if it's not, it's a faff to get it sorted and so far there's no guarantee it will even get sorted.

I'll come back if I ever see the free tenner, but this is the last time I try and take advantage of a similar amazon offer.

EpicFishFingers

Sorry to double-post but see the linked screenshot:

https://i.imgur.com/Lfk59Fi.png

Turns out there's a "promotion applied" in the rundown of the costs at the checkout.

This is probably the tenner in question - I overlooked it initially but only saw the "gift card balance" and that was still £15-ish

Again I don't know why Amazon doesn't just add the tenner to the gift card balance.

But I did see the tenner discount in the end, at least

Hope this helps others with the same issue