Amazon revoked my £379 gift card saying it had been reported stolen: CRANE ON THE CASE

In October 2024, I received £445 in Amazon vouchers as a bonus from work. I loaded these on my Amazon account, and made a couple of purchases bringing the balance to £379.

In November, I tried to buy a game costing £67.49 – but this was declined and shortly after I received an email from Amazon saying ‘an unauthorised party may have accessed my account’.

I changed my Amazon password and tried to make the purchase again, but then I received an email saying: ‘We have cancelled your order and voided the Amazon gift card balance used in the purchase.’

Amazon paid me back £67.49, the amount of the cancelled order, but the rest of the balance £311.51, is still void. 

It told me the cards were revoked because they had been ‘reported lost or stolen by the purchaser.’

I checked with the company that provided the gift cards and it confirmed it didn’t do this, but Amazon won’t budge. Can you help? A.T

Helen Crane, This is Money’s consumer champion, replies: I’m sorry to hear your work bonus was snatched away. 

You suspected it may have been because you were using a VPN or virtual private network, an online tool which protects your privacy and personal information by hiding your IP address. 

This encrypts your data – in other words, makes it unreadable – and means websites can’t tell the precise location you are accessing them from, which might make it seem like your account has been compromised.

However, such tools are increasingly common – especially in a time when people are concerned about their privacy online and worried about their information getting into the hands of scammers. 

It doesn’t seem like an issue that Amazon – one of the world’s biggest tech companies – couldn’t get over. 

You received the vouchers as a reward for your hard graft, but dealing with Amazon’s customer service ended up feeling like a full-time job in itself. 

While customers with a quibble can request a phone call from Amazon, it’s not possible to call them directly and the company promotes its online chat as a faster way to get issues solved. 

You have shown me long streams of messages between you and Amazon. 

To message a real person, you first have to get through the company’s AI assistant. 

Once you had cleared that hurdle, you were told the person who purchased the gift cards must have reported them as lost or stolen, even though you confirmed with the third-party firm your company ordered them from that they hadn’t done so. 

It’s common for companies to buy gift cards for staff rewards from such firms, often getting a discount for buying them in bulk. 

Frustratingly, Amazon also said they couldn’t look into it without permission from the purchaser. You questioned this, as Amazon had already been able to restore the £67 cost of the game you tried to order without this permission. 

But you were told Amazon’s decision was final and you couldn’t escalate it further, and that is when you got in touch with me. 

I asked why this happened, and whether customers should switch off VPNs when using vouchers on the site. 

Annoyingly, it didn’t give me a straight answer – but it did agree to restore your gift card balance to the full £379.  

An Amazon spokesman said: ‘Amazon works hard to provide customers with a great experience and it’s our commitment to go above and beyond to make things right for customers.

‘We have thoroughly reviewed this case, and have restored the customer’s gift card balance.’

Infuriatingly, it also said that if customers have concerns about an item they’ve purchased, their first point of contact should be Amazon customer services.

You had clearly already made a huge effort to do so, and when you didn’t get anywhere you turned to me. 

As an aside, I do think it would be fairer for companies to simply hand out a cash bonus, rather than vouchers, which they do because they get gift cards for less than cost price if they buy a lot. 

That way the money can be spent anywhere, and there’s no expiry dates or the risk of any tech trouble. 

However, I’m glad your work perk has been restored. 

Sainsbury’s candle exploded – then it said I should have read the instructions

I bought a Christmas candle from Sainsbury’s in late 2024. It was in a glass holder which had decorative lights around the sides, powered by a battery inside the base.

A while later I was using the candle when it exploded, projecting wax and glass around the room and staining our kitchen ceiling. I think the circuit board that powered the lights exploded, as I found bits of it all over the room. 

I put it out by throwing a wet towel over it but I think this could have been more serious if I hadn’t noticed straight away and worry the product is unsafe. 

I told Sainsbury’s and it said I should have trimmed the candle wick to prevent this happening, and that the candle shouldn’t be allowed to burn when the wax is low. 

I have never heard of this rule about cutting the wick and it wasn’t stated on the label. I asked my work colleagues and none of them had heard of it, either. 

Sainsbury’s offered a £25 voucher, but it cost me £275 to have the ceiling cleaned and repainted. I sent the candle back to Sainsbury’s for product testing. M.P, Surrey

Helen Crane replies: That sounds like a scary experience, but as you say, it could have been much worse.

While it is lucky no-one was hurt, I certainly don’t envy whoever had to scrape the candle wax off your kitchen ceiling. 

I’m a scented candle fan and do sometimes cut the wick to stop the candle from burning down too quickly, but I agree that this isn’t necessarily common knowledge. 

And I certainly wouldn’t expect my candles to explode if I didn’t. 

I contacted Sainsbury’s but it stood firm, saying the own-brand product has been tested and is safe.   

A Sainsbury’s spokesman said: ‘We have been in touch with the customer to apologise for the inconvenience this experience has caused them. 

‘We can reassure our customers that we’ve received no other complaints of this nature about this product and all our own brand candles come with instructions on the label to help customers to use them safely.’

CRANE ON THE CASE