I just bought an Amazon gift card from the Superstore in Richmond this afternoon and when I tried to claim it, the grey bar on the claim code was unusually hard to peel off (like someone glued it) so I scratched off the grey area instead and noticed that 2 of the digits in the middle were not legible.

I thought maybe it was a print error. No big deal so I contacted Amazon and the rep asked me for the card serial number. I gave him the number on the back and he said it wasn't valid. I looked closely at the card and it seems like someone scratched off 2 digits in the middle of the card. Instead of 16 numbers, there were only 14 and there was a noticeable gap where 2 other numbers should be. The rep told me to send a picture of the card to their GC escalations team and that someone would get back to me in 2-3 days.

I started looking up if this is a common scam and it seems like it has happened to some other people:

Example 1

Example 2

I couldn't sleep because I was worried someone was going to claim my GC and I just remembered there's an app on my phone that can read barcodes. I contacted another Amazon rep, gave the full 16-digit card number shown by my barcode reader and she asked me some security questions (e.g. how much was on the card, where I purchased it, etc) and I offered to send my receipt. She was able to load the GC amount on my account! I really hope this doesn't happen to anyone else.

Btw, the packaging of the card didn't look like it was tampered with. The perforated area was intact so they could've used a knife or something to open the card and then resealed it. Just giving everyone a heads up since people will most likely be buying gift cards this holiday season.