Here’s Why You Might Be Having Issues With Target Gift Cards From The iTunes Deal

Target launched a great new deal on Sunday, offering a free $15 Target gift card when buying a $100 iTunes gift card. Some people taking advantage of this online ended up having issues with the $15 Target gift cards though – myself included.

When checking the balance in incognito mode, it says “This gift card is connected to someone else’s account.” That doesn’t matter if you were intending on using the gift card(s) yourself, but it can cause problems when trying to resell the cards.

What was confusing is that some people didn’t have this happen at all, while other people only had this happen to one gift card. I fell into this latter camp – one of the Target gift cards I received said that it was tied to my account, while the other one showed up fine on the balance checker (although that too shows up on my account).

A reader reached out to explain why this is happening and it made it much clearer. Here’s what he had to say:

I think the main source of confusion is that people who don’t regularly use Target gift cards don’t have a primary gift card set on their account and accidentally set one of the $15 promo cards as their primary gift cards.

(When looking at the gift card section of your account) the gift card in the very first position is considered your primary gift card account (think of it like your Amazon gift card balance account). The rest of your cards are “viewable” in your wallet, like how you can add Starbucks gift cards to your wallet.

I figured this out when I purchased a Target gift card on Raise and accidentally added to my wallet as my primary. I reached out to a Target agent to try to get it removed and was told that is not available which is a huge blunder of their IT system. Since I bought it on Raise, obviously someone else has access to that gift card/PIN. My only option was to create a new account, but I didn’t want to lose my Target history.

Instead, I went to a store and got a $5 Target physical gift card and loaded it to my wife’s account. Now that has become her primary account. She can use either the physical gift card or her digital wallet on her app. And then I attach that gift card to my account so we can both use it. So whenever I need more balance, I just add the balance to her gift card which is the only one that has the red + button.

I can only do it by logging into her account. I can’t add balance or combine gift cards even though I see the card on my wallet. So when you press ‘Combine Gift Card’, all the gift card balance simply gets added into your primary gift card account.

Essentially I view my own account’s primary gift card as compromised because someone else on Raise who originally listed it can access it if they have mal-intent. And I use my wife’s account’s primary gift card as our go-to. Everything else is considered just “viewable”, so even though I can’t remove it from my account, it doesn’t prevent someone else from attaching it to their wallet for use.

Reading his explanation makes much more sense in my own circumstances. I bought a $100 iTunes gift card on Sunday when the deal first started and subsequently received a $15 Target gift card. When checking my balance in incognito mode, it gave the “This gift card is connected to someone else’s account” message.

Prior to this, I didn’t have a gift card linked on my account. I didn’t specify for the $15 card to become the primary gift card on my account, so it seems like Target decided to do that all by themselves. When doing the deal again later, the next $15 Target gift card I received didn’t get the “This gift card is connected to someone else’s account” message when using the online balance checker, although it does show up on my account still.

Last night I tested this out on my wife’s account. She hadn’t done the iTunes deal yet and didn’t have a primary gift card on her Target account. Sure enough, after the first order the $15 card that was issued was automatically linked to her account as a primary gift card.

If you’d like to avoid this problem, the best thing to do would be to buy a Target gift card in-store or online first and set that as your primary gift card account. Once you’ve done that, any $15 cards you receive from this iTunes deal will show up on your account, but won’t be set as your primary card and so can be resold without issue.

Note that this problem isn’t an issue if you’re taking advantage of the iTunes deal in-store – it’s only when doing it online.

Many thanks to Terrance for reaching out and explaining this.