Originally Posted by
Zorak
Going off on a bit of a tangent:
I have often done this for the reasons of simplification that you mention, or similarly because I wanted to drain a gift card etc. and loading those into Amazon gift balance is convenient so that I don't have to worry about residual balances on other cards.
However it did occur to me to wonder recently, if you buy something "important" using Amazon gift balance, your only protection is Amazon's return/replacement policy and in some cases might a credit card purchase protection benefit provide better and longer coverage? So recently I've tended to use my gift balance for consumables, Subscribe And Save, etc. and checking out with a credit card for things like electronics etc. On the other hand, I can't recall the last time I claimed a purchase protection benefit, so the likelihood is probably small enough that I shouldn't be too concerned about this...
I agree with you but the majority of my purchases with Amazon are either for consumables or cheap enough (under $50 bucks) that I wouldn't be making myself crazy with credit card protections anyway. If an item arrives damaged or gets damaged within the first 30 days, I find Amazon return process easy enough to just send it back and buy a new one. After 30 days is a problem, but it's an uncommon occurrence for me to experience an issue at that point, as the item has either been consumed or is doing fine otherwise.
In the rare event that I'm buying something expensive (threshold amount is different for everyone but for me it's about $100 and up), yes I'll use a credit card.