Mastercard Gift Cards

[securespark]

I have a fistful of these, mostly with small balances, but a couple with larger ones.

Wondering how to get the small balances off the cards. You can spend online, but if you go over, it will not go through. Hence you buy stuff less than the value of the card and end up with a remaining balance.

Amazon suggested that you could register these cards on your Amazon account and convert the balance to an Amazon gift card that never expires. I have painstakingly done this for 8 cards and, while the transaction seemed to go through initially, the confirmation email was followed by a declined payment email.

One of the potential problems is that you need a name to register these cards on Amazon, but of course, there is no name on this card as they can be bought by anyone.

Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[flameport]

For any new card, Amazon (and probably others) will add an authorisation amount first such as £1, and then charge the actual amount, and then the £1 or whatever auth is removed after a few days.
If you do the transaction for the whole amount, it will fail, because the transaction + auth is more than what is available.

Therefore to get the entire balance, do the first transaction for half of what is on the card, then wait a few days for the auth to be removed, then do another one for whatever is left on the card.

 

[SirGalahad]

I have a fistful of these, mostly with small balances, but a couple with larger ones.

Wondering how to get the small balances off the cards. You can spend online, but if you go over, it will not go through. Hence you buy stuff less than the value of the card and end up with a remaining balance.

Amazon suggested that you could register these cards on your Amazon account and convert the balance to an Amazon gift card that never expires. I have painstakingly done this for 8 cards and, while the transaction seemed to go through initially, the confirmation email was followed by a declined payment email.

One of the potential problems is that you need a name to register these cards on Amazon, but of course, there is no name on this card as they can be bought by anyone.

Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks!

Go shopping with them at a self checkout ?

 

[SFK]

As Kankerot says, I have done this in Tesco's (with self checkout and human checkout) where I paid an amount in cash and remainder with card. Not done it other way round though.
Sfk