I've heard that before. But I assume you have to type in the full card number and also the amount. I like the self checkout's because you can just swipe an be done. I tend to build up a lot of small balance cards, too many to manually type out on Amazon or my insurance company which will also take them. I'll usually load the $20 or higher cards to my insurance and use the $1-$5 cards at SCO's. Now if Amazon can just scan it and autodrain the balance like it can for Amazon GC's then that might be worth checking out for me.