About 2 hours ago I bought a Mastercard Gift card, the card is activated and has all its funds but any time I go to purchase something the payment declines; I know these sites accept Mastercard Gift cards seeing as I've used them in the past, so I'm just very frustrated. Their customer service seems to consist of a prerecorded bot with no means of actually talking to a real person.

i bought a mastercard gift card today and it refuses to work and/or activate. I have gone to balance.mastercardgiftcard.com to try and activate it. it just tells me that a system error occured and to login later. im not even trying to login, im trying to activate the damn card. i called the phone number and that did not help at all. i spent $55 on this card and really dont want it going to waste, can somebody please help?

I recently purchased a couple of $200 Mastercard gift cards (I frequently purchase these for my business and usually go to the same location where they know me by now, though once in a while I go to a different location if I'm in the area). One of the gift cards I'm not able to use or check the balance. I call the gift card issuer on the back of the card and they tell me it's not activated so I should go to the store and get it activated. Several questions for my peace of mind (away from home so I won't be able to go to the Staples' I frequent until a few weeks later, which ends up being maybe 1-1.5 months since I've made purchases of the gift cards):

• Does this actually happen where the cashier scans the card, I get charged for it, but they forgot to activate it? I would think if a card was scanned and I was charged, it would be activated so this potential for error doesn't happen.

• I have a receipt but I'm pretty sure the receipt is not for the card issued because I compared all the serial numbers on the receipt and they none of them match the card. However, I also usually buy Visa instead of Mastercard ones so this receipt could very well be it. I always quickly check the sleeves of the cards to make sure they weren't tampered with. There is the possibility that the cashier is malicious and swaps the scanned card for one of his own (I would say this is a low chance but wouldn't be surprising if they had a customer buying $2000 worth of gift cards every 2-4 weeks). I know for certain what CC I used so Staples would be able to retrieve all receipts from the last few weeks associated with that card, right? Would the surveillance camera be able to go that far to see if a mistake was made in scanning?

Much appreciated. The thought of losing $200 (doubt the gift card issuer can do anything, AFAIK this is between me and Staples) is frustrating.