I recently bought two $15 iTunes gift cards at Best Buy in Hawthorne CA. A few days later my iTunes balance runs out so I scratch the labels on the cards to redeem them. BOTH cards end up giving me this message:

"The code you entered is not recognized as a valid code"

Now I've been using iTunes cards for a long time and this is the first time I've come accross this message. I figure if I take the cards back to Best Buy to get new ones or a refund they would take one look that the code has all ready been scratched and be reluctant to help me out. So I fill out this form online for iTunes support explaining my problem where I give them the codes and the serial on the cards. I'm supposed to get a response withing 48 hours, but I don't. I try calling them and that was pointless. No help there other than telling me to email them (which I all ready have).

Has this ever happened to anyone? Should I try taking them back to Best Buy? Or am I just screwed out of $30?

This happened to me a few years ago with an iTunes card I bought at an at&t store.

The number was showing as invalid for a few days and then suddenly it worked again. at&t said they would replace the card, but by the time I got around to going, it was working again.

When I first tried the card and it wouldn't work, I did the iTunes online support thing. Never heard anything from that. I'm assuming all the support requests go right into the trash can...


Hopefully BestBuy can help you out. I would assume they would have some kind of actual person they could call about the cards. Certainly you haven't been the first person to buy a card that the activation went screwy on.


Good luck.

I bought itunes gift card 3x$10 at BBuy few days ago, bought them Santa Maria CA. Cant use them , same message, whats going on?

I know someone that works at Best Buy and when I told her whatmy problem was she told me that it would seem sketchy to her if someone was bringing back those cards and that a manager would probably have to get involved, and they might not do anything. Which is what I suspected, so that's why I contacted iTunes instead.

So finally iTunes support respond to me requesting a scan of the receipt and both sides of the cards. Once I email them that, the next day I get an email saying they are investigating it and it looks like the cards weren't activated. The email goes on to say that someone else would contact me about it. Then the next day I get another email with some codes to to redeem for my $30.

It's pretty irritating that I had to jump through hoops and then it takes them this long to get me some codes that work. Since the fault wasn't mine and it took them so long to get back to me I figured they could have at least given me and extra $5, but nope.

The only reason I buy the cards instead of using my own credit card is because occasionally there's a deal for $30 for $25 or something similar.I will definitely think twice before buying iTunes cards again though.

I work for Best Buy...You would have hard hard time returning or exchanging the cards. Look at it this was, iTunes is sold at hundreds of places and the activations are often not live and are run by third parties. I know FastCard is one of those companies.

Simply put, our system might show it as being activated but that was not communicated down the line somehow

I would think whatever process BB uses to hand off the activation to a third party would need some kind of acknowledgment back that the transmission was successful. If that is not received, it should be tried again, or at the very least, store management should receive an alert or some kind of exception report.

So if the card doesn't get activated correctly, it's the consumer's job to trace down what went wrong?

Best Buy collected the money. The activation didn't work. Best Buy should do the legwork to get the card to work if the consumer comes back to the store with a card that doesn't work.

Obviously, if you walk into Best Buy with a iTunes card that's scratched off, the retailer has a right to be skeptical and question if the card was already redeemed. That doesn't mean they can wash their hands of it and say "not our problem, go call someone else".

You'd like to think they could use your receipt's transaction ID to trace any activation problems, but that might be giving them too much credit. You'd be surprised how many holes like this exist in retail systems.

We already have to deal with 100 reports a day...the last thing we need is a report run on POSA cards.

Well if it would be inconvenient then I suppose it's okay to provide poor customer service.

I never said anything about providing poor customer service.

I work for a retail chain too in a home office capacity. There are never too many reports!

Seriously, you can't just ignore the problem.

I haven't run into this issue, ever. If it happened all the time, I would agree.

Well I'll guarantee this: if they were Best Buy gift cards having that problem, they'd be all over it. Too much profit to lose from that. I wonder how much is made off the iTunes cards. Probably not a whole lot.

Most places give you a separate receipt to confirm the card is activated, e.g. Safeway, Target, - I can't recall if Best Buy does or not.