failed gift card

[sul_9389]

I bought a gift card for 50 bucks. Took a picrjtre of the receipt and the scratched off number strip and emailed to a friend as a gift,.  Less that an hour later friend tried to use its and got an error notice.  No was to redeem or talk to an agent.  Bay just stole my $50.  What to do?

[hartungcards]

What to do?  Stop buying gift cards on-line from anyone but the original issuer.  eBay didn't steal your $50.  You basically gave it away.

[kathiec]

It can take up to four hours for a card to be activated. So tell your friend to try again. If it still doesn't work you need to take the receipt back to where you bought it to make sure it was activated correctly.

[broto_64]

You are not the first to experience this problem, years ago I used to purchase with gift cards almost exclusively until one day I ran into this... What actually happened is when I went to pay with my brand new gift card I clicked the button and BLAM it said my gift card had zero balance.
Just like that, my $200 gift card turned into $0 and no the purchase didn't happen.

Here's an individual who also ran into what I experienced, from 2021:

So first go here to check actual balance:

 https://www.ebay.com/gft/balance or https://giftcardbalance.ebay.com

Mine came out as $0 balance there even thou I had never bought anything with them.

Took me hours of searching and reading until I found out who to contact, and then I contacted those people and they sent me a link that sent me to a page where I basically had to upload pictures of the front and back of the gift card and the receipt and front and back of my driver's license (or some other form of valid photo ID) and then... Even that took several tries, and then I got an email stating my balance was reinstated but when I went to use it same problem. So rinse and repeat and I don't know how many times I went through it but eventually it worked and I was able to use my balance but that was also the last time I bought any ebay gift cards.

There is a phone number on the back of the card to call during business hours, you might give that a shot.

Here is a reddit thread on the problem:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ebay/comments/n6564x/ebay_gift_card_balance_disappeared/

It's not just ebay gift cards either:
https://www.wpxi.com/news/local/new-630-money-disappearing-gift-cards/Z5MG3EQN2ZGU7HRHLN637PLFN4/

[soh.maryl]

Not saying you're wrong, but how do you know it was purchased online instead of at a store?  

[mudshark61369]

@sul_9389,

When you buy something at a store, at the end of the business day or at a time a store chooses, the store submits all of the final transactions for the day to their bank in a batch, and then the banks all trade transactions in a batch, and money is sent between banks.  So the transaction for the gift card you purchased may take several hours or overnight to complete before the gift card balance shows up.