You can tell it's been awhile since I've shopped at CDnow from my following question, but it looks like they've changed their gift certificate redeeming procedure since I was last there.

I have two separate GC's I wish to redeem now so my question is -

Is there any way to simply deposit these GC's into my account balance (like in the old days) without having to go shop first?

If there is no way around shopping first before being able to deposit the gift certificates, do I have to have product in my shopping cart that will cost more than my current remaining account balance before it would allow me to deposit my "new" GC's?