Amazon Gift Card Pay For Prime

[Annette Fazzari]

Hasanyone had any experience with using their Amazon Prime Store Card to purchase gift cards? I'm asking because this morning my girlfriend got a notification when she was about to check out with a promo to get 5% cash back if you purchase a Hotels.com gift card. She has an Amazon Prime Store Card so we were thinking about giving it to her parents for an upcoming trip.

My concern here is MS (manufactured spending). I noticed that you can purchase a bunch of gift cards on Amazon including regular Visa or MC gift cards and I was just wondering could this trigger a red flag. It would seem like it wouldn't given Amazon is pushing the promo but I've read stories on here about getting account reviews when a bank suspects MS (Granted most of the issues were from AMEX and Capital One).

I've never purchased gift cards using the Amazon store card, but the only times I've ever read or heard of worrying about manufactured spend is buying the prepaid MasterCard or Visa cards, because they're more like cash. The hotels.com gift card is very specific, so I don't think you have anything to worry about.

To echo what's said above, I think the definition of MS is not quite so broad as to preclude the buying of gift cards, etc. Otherwise, those giftcards would probably have no buyers on sites like Amazon. If you buy a gift card with the intention of gifting it or actually using it to buy merchandise at a retailer then it should generally be considered quite above board. Even general spend prepaid cards like those issued by AmEx or Visa/MC-branded ones would likely be OK under most circumstances when used in a reasonable fashion (eg, to buy things). Many people use such cards to give money as gifts during the holidays and many parents use these cards to grant their children a measure of purchasing freedom without just handing them an authorized use credit card.

What would be considered pretty blatant manufactured spending would be for instance if you bought a prepaid Visa card and then used that card to pay off the credit card that you charged the purchase to. Back when the Mint allowed it, instances of people buying huge quantities of coins online, having them shipped to their house, and then depositing them at the bank to pay off their credit card bills and then earning rewards from the "spend" would also be considered manufactured spending.

Finally, note that just because something may not be considered MS doesn't mean you shouldn't still be wary. CCs can still treat the buying of general use instruments such as prepaid cards as cash advances and sock you with increased interest or fees. So even if what you are doing is kosher, you may still want to take the precaution of lowering your cash advance limit to zero or contacting your issuer to turn off the ability to take out cash advances.

Thanks. I told her she was probably safe. As I said in the OP, Amazon is actually advertising using your store card for a gift card. I know even my AMEX BCE has a promotion that allows you to buy giftcards where you'll receive a statement credit. I probably freaked her out more than anything. I've just read so much about MS and since we use her Amazon store card regularly and I don't want to do anything that shuts it down.

What distinguishes MS is really the volume, and what you call cycling is just the means to get the large volume. The bank doesn't know the "source" of the funds that you are using to pay off the credit card, the flag is raised when you are spending say multiples of your annual income each month. And certainly the "intent" of the purchase (planning to gift the card or use it for actual merchandise) a) doesn't matter and b) is not visible to the issuer! Just that doing either of those things probably means you aren't racking up a huge volume...

While there is no harm in reducing the cash advance limit as low as you can, I wouldn't worry about for buying gift cards. Personally I am not aware of anyone being charged cash advance fees for buying gift cards from a retail store/website. CCs are more likely to close the card or not give rewards than change the fees, these are more risky with things like funding an account with a cc at a financial institution.

During my rebuild (before obtaining a varierty of major credit cards) I purchased many, many gift cards with my Amazon card. Never any Visa prepaid cards but lots of gift cards to restaurants and other things. Never had a problem.

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