Second hand redeemed giftcard refunded & spent by original owner

Dinoflag

Anyone else had the same issue and what did you do?

I bought a second hand Amazon giftcard from an online company at a discounted rate, something I have done many times over the last couple of years with no problem.  I topped up my Amazon balance with the £50 giftcard and the code worked.

I have been keeping money in my Amazon balance in order to have money availble at christmas, therefore I had not checked or spent on Amazon for a couple of months. I went on the other day and noticed that on 7th Aug, 2 weeks after they accepted my giftcard they had refunded £43 back on to the card with a note saying refund to giftcard: under investigation.

I immediatly contacted Amazon to query this and after going round the houses and noone seeming to know why this happened I was contacted a couple of days later to say that it had been returned to the card, possibly because the previous owner had gone on to use it!! Their advice was to just contact the online company I bought the card through, which I have done and they are tryinng to contact the seller, but the seller are not going to admit anything are they, realistically?
Also the company only has a 42 day balance quarantee which ran out on the 3rd Sept.

Firstly, how is it possible that I redeem the card, no problem and Amazon credit me £50 to my account, but then 2 weeks later it can be, possibly, redeemed by someone else?!!

Secondly, if Amazon had contacted me on the 7th Aug I would have been able to go back to the company and they would have refunded me the money.

Who's responsilbility is it and what do I do if neither company want to take resposibility?!!

MyRealNameToo

You haven't bought anything from Amazon so they certainly arent responsible. They presumably have received a complaint from the original owner of the gift card saying they've gone to use it and found it has no balance and provided enough evidence for Amazon to consider they are the legitimate owner of it. 

If the other company is responsible will depend on the terms of the sale and if you are actually buying it from them or they are a market place and you are actually in contract with the seller. 

Having worked for a rewards point type system these sorts of things are not that uncommon. Was a fairly regular complaint that someone said their balance had been "stolen", most times it hadn't and their secondary card holder had simply spent it (on one occasion to buy flowers for his mistress) but there were probably some cases where the person lied. There were cases where they were genuinely stolen, generally the person lost the card and someone opportunistically had used it to buy their shopping or emails hacked and card details stolen etc. 

born_again

Dinoflag said:

Anyone else had the same issue and what did you do?

I bought a second hand Amazon giftcard from an online company at a discounted rate, something I have done many times over the last couple of years with no problem.  I topped up my Amazon balance with the £50 giftcard and the code worked.

I have been keeping money in my Amazon balance in order to have money availble at christmas, therefore I had not checked or spent on Amazon for a couple of months. I went on the other day and noticed that on 7th Aug, 2 weeks after they accepted my giftcard they had refunded £43 back on to the card with a note saying refund to giftcard: under investigation.

I immediatly contacted Amazon to query this and after going round the houses and noone seeming to know why this happened I was contacted a couple of days later to say that it had been returned to the card, possibly because the previous owner had gone on to use it!! Their advice was to just contact the online company I bought the card through, which I have done and they are tryinng to contact the seller, but the seller are not going to admit anything are they, realistically?
Also the company only has a 42 day balance quarantee which ran out on the 3rd Sept.

Firstly, how is it possible that I redeem the card, no problem and Amazon credit me £50 to my account, but then 2 weeks later it can be, possibly, redeemed by someone else?!!

Secondly, if Amazon had contacted me on the 7th Aug I would have been able to go back to the company and they would have refunded me the money.

Who's responsilbility is it and what do I do if neither company want to take resposibility?!!

Who is the company?

Odd that they state 42 days.

flaneurs_lobster

At the end of the day giftcards are just a 19-digit number (and sometimes a 4 digit PIN). 

I buy discounted online giftcards to buy my weekly supermarket shops but I buy them on the day I'm going to use them and deliberately buy less than the actual spend because I don't want to hold value in giftcard credit form for longer than absolutely necessary.

If a discounter has got hold of a bunch of Amazon giftcard numbers (as you say, second-hand) I'm not sure what's to stop the original owner from using that giftcard ID after your purchase because the change of "ownership" is not something that is registered on Amazon's system. You have then "spent" this card amount.

What's happened here is that the original owner (or someone who has convinced Amazon that they are the original owner) has actioned the card and triggered Amazon's recall system. Their claim to ownership, presumably a purchase receipt from Amazon, trumps your claim to ownership (receipt from a reseller). 

Any redress you seek must be with the seller of the (in Amazon's opinion) hookey card.

There's good reason why Amazon gift cards are often the currency of choice of criminals.

Undervalued

Dinoflag said:

Anyone else had the same issue and what did you do?

I bought a second hand Amazon giftcard from an online company at a discounted rate, something I have done many times over the last couple of years with no problem.  I topped up my Amazon balance with the £50 giftcard and the code worked.

I have been keeping money in my Amazon balance in order to have money availble at christmas, therefore I had not checked or spent on Amazon for a couple of months. I went on the other day and noticed that on 7th Aug, 2 weeks after they accepted my giftcard they had refunded £43 back on to the card with a note saying refund to giftcard: under investigation.

I immediatly contacted Amazon to query this and after going round the houses and noone seeming to know why this happened I was contacted a couple of days later to say that it had been returned to the card, possibly because the previous owner had gone on to use it!! Their advice was to just contact the online company I bought the card through, which I have done and they are tryinng to contact the seller, but the seller are not going to admit anything are they, realistically?
Also the company only has a 42 day balance quarantee which ran out on the 3rd Sept.

Firstly, how is it possible that I redeem the card, no problem and Amazon credit me £50 to my account, but then 2 weeks later it can be, possibly, redeemed by someone else?!!

Secondly, if Amazon had contacted me on the 7th Aug I would have been able to go back to the company and they would have refunded me the money.

Who's responsilbility is it and what do I do if neither company want to take resposibility?!!

As @MyRealNameToo has suggested above, any claim you may have is against either the company you bought from unless they were simple acting as an agent for the seller / original owner of the card.

Although it may have worked fine in the past, anything to do with gift cards / vouchers puts you in a significantly weaker position than paying cash or using normal banking processes. To some extent you have to factor this in and decide if the potential saving is worth the increased risk.

TELLIT01

The Amazon gift cards I've had lately have a strip to peel off rather than the old scratch card type security.  I'm guessing that the original owner peeled if off and stuck it back down again.