My account has been used to buy digital gift cards

Dan Christian1 · Jan 15, 2023

Hello all, very much hope you are all well

I have a problem, and its really starting to worry me now, sat on the sofa the other night and had three emails come through in quick succession basically telling me thank you for buying your £15 digital xbox gift card, followed by three notifications from the paypal app saying that i have authorised the payment for 3 lots of £15! this was not me, i havent owned an xbox in years, and i was going to sign upto game pass for the pc but this is currently putting me right off! I first off contacted Microsoft, and the guy i managed to speak to, although very pleasant and helped as much as he could, he sadly couldnt do anything because its an xbox team problem! however trying to get into contact with a human for xbox is proving to be extremely tricky and laborious. Finally managed to get to the page where i can ask for a refund, but received an email saying i cant have a refund because the items have already been redeemed, so went looking to contact xbox again, and can only get as far as their virtual support which is completely useless! keep trying the request call back option and all i keep getting is "Something went wrong our end, please try later!"

have also tried paypal whom i know are generally pretty good with this sort of thing but they have basically turned around and said the same as xbox, once they have been redeemed they cant be refunded =(

At my whits end now, with all the bills and everything hiked up at home, the last thing i currently need is a £45 payment going out of my account for something i didnt order! for peace of mind ive already changed my passwords for Microsoft and paypal

Anyways, the help buttons keep pointing me to the forums so thought i may as well post something here in the vain hopes that someone out there may be able to point me in the right direction on what i can do next!

Thanks for reading guys

Dan

:)

Georges C.

Hello, first it's a pleasure to be able to help you today.

My name is welcome to the community.

Hello Dan, I'm sorry for the situation you're going through, however here in the community as independent consultants we don't have access to the same information that Xbox support has.

I see you have already contacted Xbox and also Paypal unfortunately they have given you the correct information, once a Gift Card is redeemed it is not possible to make a refund.

What I can recommend is that you check through your Paypal App for mobile devices which companies are authorized to make collections and payments.

And you can remove any Microsoft account that is added in your Paypal account.

To do this, go to your Paypal App, then: Profile»Data and Privacy»Assigned Permissions.

Obsessive Power

Hi,

I'm sorry you've had this issue. When you say your 'account' has been used are you talking about your Microsoft account, which you can access and see your purchase history via this link https://account.microsoft.com/billing/orders or your Bank account?

If it's from your Microsoft account (i.e. these purchases show on the above link). You need to go to https://support.xbox.com/contact-us/

Click the Contact us button

Choose Subscriptions & billing from the drop down box and then choose I don't recognise a charge. But a brief description and continue with the on screen prompts

If you can't find these transactions on your Microsoft account and you don't have any other accounts in your name. You'll need to contact your bank and open up a fraud investigation with them.

UK banks can generally be contacted 24/7 when it relates to fraud.

Dan Christian1

Hello guys, thank you very much both for your replies, i really appreciate it

Thank you for your suggestion George regarding removing companies on Paypal, i managed to find the option, and i have done that for now to hopeful stop this from happening again anytime soon, so thank you very much for that suggestion =)

Obsessive Power, thank you very much for your detailed reply. Yes, sorry i should have made that more clear, it was from my Microsoft/xbox account, which in turn has now come out of my paypal/bank account. Sadly however i have tried the solutions you have suggested and come up short, if only i could get in touch with a human from the Xbox team, then i think i would actually be able to get somewhere, im still trying the callback system but keeps telling me something went wrong which is rather annoying! im not sure if this is info that can be given out on the forums, but is there an email address for Xbox customer services kicking about at all or do i need to keep trying?
Will go to the bank as a last resort but hoping to try and sort the problem before that measure has to be taken!

Thanks again both for taking the time to reply, i do appreciate it very much =)

Daft Badger

You have never been able to use gift cards/account funds to buy a xbox live gold subscription.

They are used to buy digital content,games,dlc,movies etc.

You need an actual xbox live subscription card,a credit/debit card or paypal account to buy a gold subscription.

Porschesgt10

Hi and welcome.

I would do teo things if the gift card has not been used the you should use the gift card on your account and gift him what he wants.

If used the I would change it to an adult account then let him buy it then after that change it back to child account.

And always gift him from the adult account as that's what I do with my kids

Zed

My account has been used to buy digital gift cards