Introduction
There seems to be a glitch in the eBay checkout system when you are trying to use multiple gift cards to pay for an item. I think this happens when your eBay account isn’t linked to your Paypal – what I mean is, for most people, if you buy a $75 item and apply a $100 eBay gift card, the remaining $25 is ‘saved’ to your Paypal account. This is good and bad – good because it’s saved and bad in that it’s linked to that Paypal account. That means you can’t use that gift card when checking out with a different Paypal account.
Why is this an issue you ask? Well, if you ever get your Paypal account blocked, your gift cards are in limbo and good luck trying to “unlock” them from that Paypal account. It’s also bad in case you are over the $5,000 every 6 month limit too and want to use that gift card using a differnt Paypal account. See Doc’s post about the limits. Moral of story – I don’t want my gift cards linked to any Paypal account. And I think this is what’s causing these disappearing gift cards issue with eBay.
Disappearing gift cards
So I was shopping for some brakes for my car and found them for $112 on eBay. Here’s your typical checkout screen. It of course wants me to use my checking account. No thanks!
Adding the first $100 gift card
Here’s the screenshot after I add a $100 gift card. Makes sense; everything is fine. I’ve applied $100 and now it wants to charge $11.95 to my bank account. No thanks!
Adding a $25 gift card
Now watch what happens when I add a $25 gift card to the checkout:
You can see the big fat error at the bottom “We can’t apply this code to your order.” If I try to add a DIFFERENT gift card, I get the same error. When I re-enter the first $100 gift card, I get the same screenshot as #2 above where I still owe $11.95.
Notice that my total is still $111.95 in the upper right. Frustrated, I would usually just check out with screenshot #2 where I applied the $100 GC and pay the rest on my credit card. However, today I looked at screenshot #3 again. If you look at the top, you’ll notice that the form of payment has changed from my Bank of America account to say “Gift cards, coupons.” I went ahead and clicked ‘Confirm and pay’ on screenshot #3 to complete the checkout.
Checking Paypal transaction details
When I check the transaction details in Paypal, I can confirm that it deducted $100 from the 1st gift card and $11.95 from the second gift card. Just what I wanted from the get-go.
Conclusion
I never had this issue in the past with the old checkout screen; it’s this new one that is misleading. So go ahead and apply all the gift cards you want, and then double check your Paypal transaction details to see which gift cards were actually applied. Fix your shit eBay!
I and my friends have experienced similar issue to yours. Yours is quite miraculous as you’re able to still use your gift card balance via PayPal. In my own case and that of my friends and others, once you get that error prompt, forget it, it means eBay has automatically frozen the gift cards. You contact eBay and the next thing they request is stated as follows in quote
“We need specific documentation to complete our investigation.
For physical gift cards, all of following information is required:
– A photo of the back of the eBay gift card(s) with the redemption code(s) and bar code(s) visible
– A photo of the receipt used to purchase the eBay gift card(s)
– A handwritten note containing your eBay username and the current date. The handwritten note must be included in every photo.
For digital gift cards, all of following information is required:
– A photo of the redemption code(s) email confirmation with header information. Header information must show the email address of the sender and recipient.
– A photo of the receipt or purchase confirmation email used to purchase the eBay gift card(s)
– A handwritten note containing your eBay username and the current date. The handwritten note must be included in every photo.
Documentation must also follow these guidelines:
– Only photos are acceptable. Photocopies will not be accepted.
– The accepted file types are JPG, PNG, BMP, or GIF formats.
– Do not cut off or crop out any part of the gift card or receipt.
– Digitally edited or altered photos will not be accepted and may result in a denial of your claim.
– Do not submit any personal information, i.e., driver’s license, social security number, or the password to your eBay account. This information should remain confidential and will not alter the result of your claim.”
How on earth do they expect one to have all gift cards after successfully loading it the first time? I expect that I should be able to use the left over balance anytime I want since it’s stuck to my account, but NO, eBay doesn’t see it that way. If you can’t provide what they ask for, forget it. In my case, I had to beg who gifted me the cards to help with this, I uploaded it and I got an email reply that my account was permanently suspended. Imagine that!
A lot have experienced this, many can’t fix it either because they don’t have all the stated requirements, be it card, receipt or a good camera to take photo. Some have had rejected documents for poor quality photos submitted. It’s just absurd. I see this as scam, Amazon has also given me a share of this. Lost good amount to my closed account and they won’t reinstate.
I hope they all fix this mess one day.
This article is 5 years old so I’m sure things have changed since then.
Ebay has lots of glitches and errors, but trying to resolve any of them with their “cust serv” reps is like banging your head against the wall. For the sake of your sanity, AVOID any and all contact with them.
That doesn’t surprise me one bit.
Never ever had such problems with gift cards as I do with eBay. Why they don’t implement a system similar to Amazon’s, where you ‘bank’ your gift cards and then they always work! eBay is still a early 1990s pre-Web baked entity. Kinda like Yahoo!
If you tie your paypal and ebay accounts, then it does act like a bank on the Paypal side.
I’ve done that, it’s just that I have all these gift cards that I can’t use on eBay/Paypal due to their secret usage rules. Those gift cards are in limbo until my account resets….