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How long to get Gift Certificates?

sarahme85

sarahme85

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Joined
Jul 17, 2012
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310
HI! I was hoping to purchase MYSELF a gift certificate. Kind of like a monthly allowance. Starting this month I want to buy myself the gift certificate of like $25 and keep myself to that. My question is (because I'm impatient and have 3 things in my cart already), how long does it take to get my code? Or does this all happen automatically? Because I REALLY wanna scrap...lol. Thanks :):woot
 
sarahme85 said:
HI! I was hoping to purchase MYSELF a gift certificate. Kind of like a monthly allowance. Starting this month I want to buy myself the gift certificate of like $25 and keep myself to that. My question is (because I'm impatient and have 3 things in my cart already), how long does it take to get my code? Or does this all happen automatically? Because I REALLY wanna scrap...lol. Thanks :):woot
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Great idea! Nice way to budget money.
 
Aaaand I have a question about GC. Should you use in 1 time? I mean: i buy a 30$ Gc, should I spend all 30 $ in 1 order?
 
lol. I got a $25 one and spent like $11 on a kit and a few fonts. I want to pace myself for like March BYOC in case I fall in love :)
 
sarahme85 said:
lol. I got a $25 one and spent like $11 on a kit and a few fonts. I want to pace myself for like March BYOC in case I fall in love :)
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Great, so you can use it multiple times :) i will follow your example and buy one! Thanks for sharing your idea :)
 
kyky said:
Great, so you can use it multiple times :) i will follow your example and buy one! Thanks for sharing your idea :)
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Yeah, there is a GC # that gets emailed to you. Just keep that e-mail so when you use it or check your balance you have it.
 
I do that to budget, too. I've gotten away from it lately (since I was saving for a new computer), but for a few years I bought myself prepaid Visas every 3 months to cover 3 months of scrap stuff and ebooks. Now that I've bought the computer, I need to go back to that.
 
Careful on the prepaid visas. A lot of them have added fees per use. And if course the stupid activation fee.
 
The ones I got didn't have any per-use fees (didn't even know that some did :( ), but there was the activation fee. That's why I always bought them to cover 3 months. I didn't love paying the fees, of course, but I needed 1 card that I could use to budget scrap supplies, ebooks, and the occasional craft store purchase.
 
did you buy one card, or multiple cards? green dots are $5 each load.... and i think the activation fees have gone down??
 
It depends on the state too. My father was given a prepaid visa from work, and the first use is free, but every purchase after that has a $1.95 'convenience fee'.
 
rach3975 said:
The ones I got didn't have any per-use fees (didn't even know that some did :( ), but there was the activation fee. That's why I always bought them to cover 3 months. I didn't love paying the fees, of course, but I needed 1 card that I could use to budget scrap supplies, ebooks, and the occasional craft store purchase.
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I bank at a credit union. I can have what they call an express card, or 'lunch money card' as the teller explained it. Basically, I can transfer a set about to the card, or works just like the prepaid cards, but there are no fees. None. You might want to see if your banking institution offers something similar. Maybe advertised as an allowance card or college kid card?
 
sarahme85 said:
did you buy one card, or multiple cards? green dots are $5 each load.... and i think the activation fees have gone down??
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I bought 1 non-reloadable card with the amount of money I'd budgeted for the 3 months. The fee was $5-6, but paying that once every 3 months wasn't too bad.


bestcee said:
I bank at a credit union. I can have what they call an express card, or 'lunch money card' as the teller explained it. Basically, I can transfer a set about to the card, or works just like the prepaid cards, but there are no fees. None. You might want to see if your banking institution offers something similar. Maybe advertised as an allowance card or college kid card?
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Something like that sounds great, but our bank offers absolutely nothing without a fee. We're changing banks in the near future because they've now started adding fees to things that never had fees before. Maybe I'll check at the new bank.


bestcee said:
It depends on the state too. My father was given a prepaid visa from work, and the first use is free, but every purchase after that has a $1.95 'convenience fee'.
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That's ridiculous! I don't know if it's because of the state or not, but I've used 4 or 5 different brands of prepaid Visa and prepaid American Express, and none of them had a fee beyond the activation fee.


It's been 6 months or so since I bought one, since I was spending less and just using my PayPal balance for scrapping while I saved for the computer. But the last few cards I bought I ended up switching to American Express because the Visas weren't playing nicely with digiscrapping stores that run all their cc purchases through PayPal. Hopefully that has changed now that PayPal is officially accepting prepaid cards. (And just in case anyone buys an American Express card, you have to call American Express customer service to get those set up for online use. They'll work in a brick and mortar store without the phone call.)
 
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