Lots of us use small $.50 Amazon reloads as a way of meeting transaction requirements for various credit or debit cards. Three separate readers report being recently blocked by Amazon from doing excessive small $.50 reloads. System simply block the reload from going through.
One good thing is that these readers have not experienced an account freeze, just a block. I’ve had my Amazon account frozen in the past, and it’s not fun. Hopefully, that won’t be an issue here.
It’s yet unclear if doing reloads of higher amounts will help, e.g. maybe multiple reloads of $1-2 are fine. Another option is to buy $1 Amazon gift cards instead, unclear if the sensitivity is there too. (Reloads have a $.50 minimum while e-gift cards have a $1 minimum.)
Lots of people use Amazon reloads for things like the Amex Everyday Preferred requires 30 transactions per month to get the increased rewards rate, or various other credit and debit cards that have transaction requirements. This Amazon crack down will certainly make those more difficult. Check out our post How To Meet Minimum Debit & Credit Transaction Requirements for additional suggestions, including things like using the self-checkout at the grocery to break up your purchase or pumping small amounts of gas in separate transactions.
Reader Gadget gives another tip: by removing all cards from your Amazon account and adding them back in will reset your account and allow additional loads (removing a single card and adding it back does not work). Of course we don’t yet know the long term viability of this idea.
