This has been a great week for Amazon deals! Hopefully many of you were able to lock in the incredible deal for $25 off a $75 purchase from Amazon/Amex a couple of days ago. This deal is now closed, so congrats if you got in! If you didn’t make it, I am confident that Amex has more deals waiting in the wings…they always do.
The foolproof way (which I definitely need ;))to work the Amazon/Amex deal is to buy $75 Amazon gift cards, load them onto your account, and make purchases as needed. This way, the funds will never expire, and you won’t have to figure out how to make each purchase total exactly $75. I spent a few minutes this morning buyingAmazon e-mail gift cardsbecause it is an almost instant way to handle this: you can get the cash into your account and also get an email confirmation from Amex right away!
However, this got me to thinking (sometimes a good thing). As long as I was loading up my Amazon account, I realized that I could also use this as an opportunity to drain some of my random Visa and Amex gift cards. You know the ones I’m talking about, the ones that have like $3.62 on them. I’ve got a bunch floating around the corners of my life: in the cupholder of my car, the bottom of my purse, and the windowsill in the kitchen. I gathered them all up and sat back down at my computer, then this is what I did.
It was super easy.
1. Head to Amazon and click on the Amazon Gift Card – E-mailpage.
2. Enter the amount that is on your random Visa or Amex card
3. Make your purchase. Make sure to enter your random gift card number on the payment screen (don’t accidentally pay with a saved credit card, for example).
You will instantly get an email from Amazon that you have received a gift card. In the body of the email, there will be a cute photo like this one (or whatever awesome design you chose), along with a link that reads “Redeem Now.”
4. Click on the “Redeem Now” link and you will arrive at a screen that looks like this:
5. When you click “Apply to Your Account,” you will get immediate confirmation:
That’s it! My random gift cards are gone and my life is a little less cluttered. (So glad I don’t have to look at the Visa card in my cupholder anymore!)
Anyone else have tips for draining random balances?
(Note that I do get a referral credit if you use one of the links above. I really appreciate and thank you for your support!)
