You cannot. You can only buy gift card balance with physical currency. That’s a universal truth with gift cards, and prepaid cards like Visa also will not accept non-currency balance.
You can gift your balance in the form of a product to someone else on Amazon, i.e. you can buy a product with a gift balance and send that to the person, but you cannot buy a prepaid card with a gift balance even if it’s a physical card.
I’ve tried to transfer Amazon gift balance to a prepaid PSN card that way. No dice.
this ^.
unless you are dense or trolling, i don’t see what the problem is here. these are two separate transactions that share a process. you are either buying gold with your own real money, or you are buying a token to be used for 1 month of game time, or $15 in B-Net balance. it’s not rocket surgery
it’s a way for blizzard to essentially make $5 off the people who aren’t paying anything for their sub- someone paid for it and they paid extra on top of that
Removing a cetain dino mount has left some people feeling forced to buy tokens. Still not forced, but pressured at the very least. I’m so glad I don’t care about mounts.
Shouldnt need any consumer protection for this. If you can pay $15 for something why on earth would you pay $20 for it? If someone is that bad at decision making they probably cant afford to be faced with that decision to begin with and would need far more than consumer protection!
Sorta of only they limit them to digital items only which is BS if you ask me. They are making $5 per transaction so why should you only be able to buy digital items?
Very little ticks me off more than people acting condescendingly smart, when they are nothing of the sort.
Not that it’s related in any way, shape or form to the subject at hand, but deceptive advertising and deals that favor the retailer are commonplace in our society. Of course, being the astute armchair consumer protection advocate you are, you’ve noticed this:
Generic vs. name brand medicines.
Dealership car repairs versus local auto shops.
Extended warranty programs.
Diet fads.
Most options on new cars.
Cable TV packages
“As Seen on TV!” junk/garbage
The list goes on ad infinitum.
There’s no law against cleverly wording your product to fool people, unfortunately. And morally, that sucks, though legally, it’s perfectly OK.
But, I digress. The WoW token and marketing are neither deceptive, nor difficult to understand. And it’s not a gift certificate by any stretch of the imagination, so why are you hellbent on labeling it as such?
You want to spend your time wisely, go to the supermarket and stand in front of the generic cold medicine, and explain to the plebs how they are setting fire to a nice, crisp $10 bill by purchasing “Day Quil” instead of Vons brand.
Then go read up on the definition of “gift certificate.”
The WoW token in no way, shape, or form adheres to either the California state definition, or the Federal definition, of a “gift certificate.”
If you purchase a token, for $20 real cash, you get gold. That’s it and that’s all. You cannot get Blizzard balance for that token. You cannot do anything with that token except get gold. Read this paragraph twice.
“But Breakbeat, use the gold from that token to buy Blizzard balance and you’re losing $5 and/or Blizzard is hoodwinking you!”
No. Just stop. You can buy a token for $20, redeem it for gold, then buy another, different product using that gold, which is redeemable for $15 Blizzard balance. Which would be a ridiculously stupid move for anyone to make, when they could just load up their Blizzard balance with the original $20. That is not the intended use of the $20 token, and it’s not marketed as such. The fool that loses $5 in this manner doesn’t need consumer protection, they need a primary school education.
The token that is purchased for gold and redeemable for game time or Blizzard balance is a DIFFERENT token. That, also, is not a “gift certificate,” because it is not transferable to another entity, which is one of the intrinsic properties of a gift certificate. It’s also bought with virtual currency which isn’t the same as buying a real gift certificate for real money - which is what the law(s) apply to.
Thanks, try again next time!
Edit: And correct your previous spelling and grammar errors; they’re not befitting of one standing on a soapbox.
(By the way, no, it’s not “transferable;” that word doesn’t mean what you think it means.)
It was a rhetorical question. I wanted to do that myself when Amazon had a limited time offer selling their own gift cards at a discount a couple of years ago.
But many store gift cards are easily transferable. There are businesses that buy gift cards that aren’t tied to a specific customer for cash. At a discount, of course.
Depends on your jurisdiction. A lot of Europe doesn’t allow hidden at the register costs and sellers have to advertise true prices with everything included.
It’s not non transferable as in the person that buys it has to use it. Person A buys it. person B uses it. At some point it was “Transfered”
And if I buy an Amazon gift card and sell it for in game gold, does that make the Amazon gift card not a gift card?
It’s $5 more expensive than the subscription, but the benefit is that you can re-sell the token on the AH or just use the gold for in-game stuff.
The whole point of the WoW token is to exchange real life money and turn it into virtual WoW gold, to buy or bypass whatever farming is needed; pay to progress (a form of p2w) basically. It was done to offset the huge amount of Chinese gold farmers back in the day (poor people actually have livelihoods off of farming and selling virtual gold to lazy people in the West for American $$$), and Blizzard themselves gets a cut.
Still, I don’t think it’s ethical and undermines playing the actual game itself. As soon as allow anyone to use a credit card for in-game stuff, the game has been tarnished in my eyes. Sad to see it become the norm, but all the best games (my faves) don’t have this stuff.
The monthly sub price is only for you to access your WoW account; it cannot be sold or exchanged for anything else. Account-sharing is also illegal, supposedly.
