Amazon Allowance Cracks Down on Grandfathered $.50 Loads

Amazon Allowance allows us to automatically add money to an Amazon account on a steady basis for yourself or others. They used to allow $.50 allowances, same as their $.50 reloads, but then they switched it a year ago to a minimum $5 load.

Until now, allowance loads of under $5 which were previously set up continued so long as the allowance wasn’t changed in any way.

A couple people (1, 2) recently noted that those <$5 loads are now coming with a ‘payment error’ message and aren’t going through. Apparently, Amazon has now stopped the grandfathered small loads.

Going forward, the best option is to manually reload your Amazon balance $.50 at a time. It’s also possible to buy e-gift cards and apply them to your account, but those now have a minimum $1 purchase amount.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

14 Comments
newest
oldest most voted

Michael
Michael (@guest_290391)
August 31, 2016 23:20

Who says Amazon doesn’t care about the little things?

Mohammad M
Mohammad M (@guest_290302)
August 31, 2016 21:20

Thanks. I updated my BBR allowance to $5. I know I could do manual 50c or $1 gift cards but this way, I can make sure that I won’t miss the $30/quarter. Has been a nice ride.

anthonyjh21
anthonyjh21 (@guest_290242)
August 31, 2016 17:18

Scared me for a minute. I’ve only done the manual .50 loads so for those of us who weren’t grandfathered this is N/A.

Mser
Mser (@guest_290233)
August 31, 2016 16:50

They’ve been cracking down for last 4 months. Every month they killed off a few more 50c loads and last month they killed the last of them.

Gary
Gary (@guest_290210)
August 31, 2016 15:00

Used to be $0.01. People with 10×10 freedoms wrote scripts to generate millions of points. Obviously, neither Chase nor Amazon were too happy about that.

JEM
JEM (@guest_290205)
August 31, 2016 14:53

Hmm… mine are still going through fine – got the email notice this morning that $0.50 had been added. Perhaps they’re rolling this out?

Hunter
Hunter (@guest_290247)
August 31, 2016 17:28

My $1 allowance are also working as of yesterday

stephen
stephen (@guest_290184)
August 31, 2016 13:37

Your post has a typo for minimum load of $5k.

Miguel
Miguel (@guest_290186)
August 31, 2016 13:43

Hefty allowance!

Dave
Dave (@guest_290202)
August 31, 2016 14:45

wow, 5k!

yussuf
yussuf (@guest_290222)
August 31, 2016 15:48

i was wondering the same thing! Like who the heck will add 5k?

William Charles
Admin
August 31, 2016 21:18

Fixed

Steve
Steve (@guest_290182)
August 31, 2016 13:35

Minimum $5 load, not $5k

William Charles
Admin
August 31, 2016 21:18

Thanks, updated.