Google Play - $25 Gift Card

Will NOT buy again. Google Play Store will allow you to use it ONLY IF the product you buy has a less value than your gift card value. That is, if you have a $10 gift card, and you want to buy something worth $11 with using $1 from your other bank card, Google Play won't let you do it. Google Play will tell you "insufficient fund" and charge all $11 from your bank card. So, you can't use the $10 at all. The only way to use your $10 gift card is to add more credit to your Google account. The amount can only be $5, $10, $25, $50, and so on... In this case, you have to add a minimum of $5 in order to buy the thing worth $11, and then you have $4 left in your account. You can never use out all the value in a gift card unless you keep adding more value to your account. This is not reasonable. Most gift cards (of other companies) will allow you to use the value in gift cards FIRST and to pay the rest by bank cards. I like Google, but I don't understand why they do this to gift card users. When you give gift cards to a friend, you definitely don't want your friend to suffer from this.

Will NOT buy again. Google Play Store will allow you to use it ONLY IF the product you buy has a less value than your gift card value. That is, if you have a $10 gift card, and you want to buy something worth $11 with using $1 from your other bank card, Google Play won't let you do it. Google Play will tell you "insufficient fund" and charge all $11 from your bank card. So, you can't use the $10 at all. The only way to use your $10 gift card is to add more credit to your Google account. The amount can only be $5, $10, $25, $50, and so on... In this case, you have to add a minimum of $5 in order to buy the thing worth $11, and then you have $4 left in your account. You can never use out all the value in a gift card unless you keep adding more value to your account. This is not reasonable. Most gift cards (of other companies) will allow you to use the value in gift cards FIRST and to pay the rest by bank cards. I like Google, but I don't understand why they do this to gift card users.

When I signed up for Google Play Music and YouTube Red in turn, I determined that there are two separate ways to pay for these things, using different methods to do so. One way allows you to pay with conventional methods, and the other allows you to use gift cards to pay for it. As Google Play gift cards are discounted today, I was glad to hear that I could pay for two months of Google Play Music and YouTube Red, especially since I like to use gift cards to pay for things. This is especially important because it depends on which service you actually bought, because either way you get the other for free. If you pay for one, you can use gift cards as well as conventional methods like debit and credit, but if you pay for the other, you can't use gift cards. Such is why I used the former, as I could budget for buying gift cards to make it easy to get free music and adless YouTube, without overtaxing my credit. Let me say this, it's worth it. I give my thanks to BestBuy.com for making this happen!

I was trying to watch an old movie and every site that I found it on charged a fee for it. I didn't want to have to create yet another online account just to be able to rent/buy a movie that was most likely a one time thing and would never be used again, so when I seen it was offered on google play under the movies/tv option, I went with that. Walked in best buy, bought the card, went online to the store to rent the movie and when prompted to pay, just typed in the numbers off the card and there you have it. I got the movie and the rest of the money off the card that wasn't used was put on my account to use later if I need to purchase another movie, a book, an app, or whatever. Since then I have went back and purchased a song and it worked the same way except the card info was already there which made the process even faster. Can't really go wrong with buying this card.

BEWARE: I have TWICE had the experience of purchasing multiple cards and having some or all of them come up "Invalid code" when attempts were made to use them. Not only are the codes extremely long and thus prone to errors, but often even "activated" cards are declined. At that point your only recourse is to throw them away because GooglePlay "Customer Service" is extremely useless. Google will tell you to "take the receipt back to the store". How are your recipients going to do that? Oh, and the store will say "we cannot refund gift cards." Only give these cards if 1. You do not mind wasting your money. 2. You really don't like the person you're giving them to.

BEWARE: I have TWICE had the experience of purchasing multiple cards and having some or all of them come up "Invalid code" when attempts were made to use them. Not only are the codes extremely long and thus prone to errors, but often even "activated" cards are declined. At that point your only recourse is to throw them away because GooglePlay "Customer Service" is extremely useless. Google will tell you to "take the receipt back to the store". How are your recipients going to do that? Oh, and the store will say "we cannot refund gift cards." Only give these cards if 1. You do not mind wasting your money. 2. You really don't like the person you're giving them to.

Purchase was simple, load was simple. Word of advice: make sure you use a coin. Almost lost the code because I decided to peel the scratch-off part with my nail and it made it almost unreadable by lifting the ink or certain letters were made confusing. This is directed at Google, but they should make zeros and O (the capital letter) more obvious. Draw a line through zero or something. I believe the $10 giftcard is the cheapest one you can buy to load. I didn't want to pay $15 to load iTunes (the game I play is supported by both platforms), so smart marketing on Google. You took away business from Apple. I buy my giftcards in the store as it goes towards Reward Zone and I can review for points. It's win-win! :)

I got an email from Best Buy to submit a review about this. Personally I think reviewing a gift card is ridiculous. I bought this because I had just purchased the Note 7 phone and I didn't have any apps for it since I've had an iPhone since the release of the iPhone 4. I was planning to buy music and apps to help me take better pictures. Switching from IOS to Android was too difficult for me. I was releaved big time that the Note 7 was a failure and I was able to return it easily. I went back to Apple (7 plus). The remaining credit went to my oldest grandson. He purchased movies with it. All the transactions went smoothly which is why I gave it 5 stars.