why can’t my friend use his gift card?

Hi Mrs M! I hope you are well, delighted to be able to offer you my help!

I'm sorry to hear that your friend is having trouble with not being able to use their account balance. The first thing I would like to know is if the redeemed code is from the same region as your friend's account.

In case you want a refund, you can fill out the following form:

https://support.xbox.com/en-US/forms/request-a-refund

Best regards,
Daniel.

We did try to turn off his console and back on, that did not seem to help. Yes the option to use the balance on his Microsoft account appears, and we click on it, it would say oops something went wrong, we’re not sure what happened. The error code on the bottom of the message does change.

In this case, you should contact support directly to verify what really happened, since this problem that you are telling me about is not very common.

Enter the following link: https://support.microsoft.com/contactus/

Best regards,
Daniel.

I understand if he is from the same region there should be no problems, in your post I can see that his balance appears in the account, but he cannot use it.

Could you explain it to me a little better? When you want to use it, it appears Wow, I'm sorry, we don't know what went wrong and by chance an error code doesn't appear? In this case, try logging out of the account and logging back in.

Best regards,
Daniel.

Yes he is, it’s a gift card I bought at a store for his birthday