Redeemed 12 month gold card but still silver

Free gold weekends still keep you silver,

Free Gold weekend allows you to do the stuff a gold member can,

To get Gold Member status you will need to Redeem a 1, 3, or 12 month code card.

Did you buy an XBL 3,6 or 12 month card?

It looks like things have changed when it comes to having XBL Gold.

Before we could just buy a 12 month card and never have to enter our credit card info but now a credit card is a basic requirement in order to have a Gold account.

It's even needed if you were to create a Silver account and you wanted to redeem your free 1 month Gold trial.

It was a 12 month gold card, I had gamepass before I redeemed the gold card so it should have just added the 12 months to my gamepass

Now I can't even redeem an xbox 12-month gold subscription card.

Time you redeem via prepaid cards is fully added to whatever time is left on your son's account (up to 36 months).

So for example if your son has still 3 months of Gold left on his account, and you add a 12 month card, your son has 15 months of gold on his account.

Or if your son has an active subscription, and his subscription would renew in 3 months from now, and you add the 12 month card, the prepaid card will "pause" his subscription, activate 12 months, and after the 12 months of the card are over, the subscription
will continue with the remaining 3 months, and your son will have to be billed again in 15 months from now.

So there really is no need to wait until you redeem prepaid cards.

In fact, since some promotional cards have an expiry date on them, I heartily recommend to redeem prepaid cards as soon as possible.

But keep in mind, that you can have only up to 36 month of Gold or Game Pass time on your account.