A lot of credit card companies offer gift cards which work like credit cards. So it’s like a Visa card with $50 on it. But how do you spend all of the money?
If I try to buy something more than the balance, the transaction is declined. So I’m limited to buying things less than the available balance.
Normal store gift cards will allow you to apply the balance of the card to any purchase. If your purchase is more than the balance, the card is zeroed out and you have to pay for the remainder.
Anyone have any tricks on how to easily clear out a credit card gift card? Other than finding something that is exactly the price of your balance, that is.
I’ve, several times, asked the cashier to “put $50 (or remaining balance) on this, please.” Hell, none of my kids have ever bought something with a gift card that didn’t require me tossing in an extra buck or twelve.
If you know in advance the amount left on the card, most stores will let you split your payment, and charge X amount to the card and pay the rest with cash, check or a different card.
Of course, finding a cashier who knows how to do that may be a different problem.
If your gift cards work like the ones I deal with every day, you will need to pay any part of the purchase over the remaining card balance first, then have the cashier run the card as the last transaction. This confuses and angers many people, who think that the card and the computer should be smart enough to figure out how much money is left on the card and deduct it automatically. But the transactions are run as credit transactions and, just like a regular credit card doesn’t charge up to the limit if the transaction is more than the available credit, the transaction will just reject in its entirety.
My kids wanted to combine some VISA gift cards they had recieved in order to buy a game console at Target. Turns out that, although the Target POS will allow split payments, it will only allow ONE credit card type in the transaction. The cashier held a pow-pow with some of the other, craftier salepersons and they figured out how to subvert the system by using a different POS to convert the VISA cards to Target gift cards, of which the POS would take multiples. I thought it was kinda interesting to watch.
We got $500 Visa cards (!!!) for Xmas last year at work. I ran mine dry with no problem - for the last bit of it, I just told the cashier to “use this up first”. I didn’t have to make it the second part of the transaction like Otto, though.
Would running it like a debit card instead of a credit card make a difference?
When I bought my cabinets last month, Home Depot let me use two Visa gift cards, several Home Depot gift cards, and my own credit card. Their POS system handled all of these quite well. Of course I did have to tell them how much the charge to each of the Visa gift cards.