Use Coinstar machines to get Amazon Gift cards
I’m sure you have lots of coins sitting in a jar somewhere in your house. Did you know that if you take them to a Coinstar machine you can change them for credit on an Amazon gift card? As long as you make the exchange at the CoinStar machine for an Amazon “gift card” you DO NOT pay any percentage to CoinStar for the automated counting of your change! You get FULL CREDIT by way of your Amazon Gift Card.
Keep in mind that not all Coinstar machines offer the gift card option. Go to www.coinstar.com to find a machine in your area that does.
So how does this work? Piece of cake:
- Follow the instructions on the Coinstar touch screen, at the prompt touch e-certificate, it will then give you various retailer options.
- Touch the Amazon logo and then dump your coins.
- When it is done counting it will ask you again if you want the Amazon certificate. When you tell it yes, it will print out a receipt (the e-certificate) with a confirmation number (combination of numbers and letters).
- When you get home go to the Manage Your Account section on the computer and choose add an e-certificate or gift card, put the confirmation number in the box, hit enter and Wallah – it tells you that you have $xx.xx on your account.
- When you buy something from Amazon it will ALWAYS take it from your gift card/e-certificate balance first before charging a linked credit card. You can also easily check your balance anytime in the same spot!
Be careful – there’s a minimum amount of change required for gift cards/certificates. I believe the minimum is $5. I got caught in this while dumping a jar of change before I moved. It was mostly pennies, so it didn’t add up to much, but I was right under the $5 limit and had to pay the coin counting fee and not get a gift certificate.
This is a great way to use your spare change. I know a couple that had been saving their coins for quite a while and ended up getting almost $500 in credit! They used it to grab a new Kindle DX ereader and are really enjoying it.
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