Can't apply this Premium code to your account

[HappyHubby]

This is a new one for me. For years, I have purchased a 12-month gift card from Sam's Club and used it to re-up my Spotify account. Spotify says my next bill will be on 7/8, so that is when my current gift card is exhausted. When I first tried to apply this gift card, Spotify told me no because it will not allow me to have more than 18 months of prepaid service. Now it tells me no for this reason, and I do not know what to do:

"You can't apply this Premium code to your account. This is likely because you have an existing Premium subscription that cannot be combined with a Premium code."

My gift card will expire 7/24. Has Spotify changed redemption rules to make it worthless?

[HappyHubby]

Hey there,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and welcome. 

If the PIN is not working when you try to redeem it, it could be related to different factors. First, we'd recommend making sure you've entered the correct characters. Since a zero looks like a capital 'O', a capital 'I' looks like a one, or a capital "S" looks like a number five, we'd recommend testing with these other characters to see if it makes any difference.

Also, since the card gets activated when it's scanned by the cashier, make sure that the receipt you have has the Spotify card registered. If it has a number, check if it matches the serial number (not the PIN) of your card. Remember that the gift card must have been purchased in the same country where you are currently located and also match the country of your account.

Note: Keep in mind that after 4 attempts, you'll get an error message. If you do, you can try again after 24 hours.

Hope this helps. If you have any additional questions, don't hesitate to ask.

[Snuffly]

Trying to use my physical gift card, just revealed the PIN today. I entered it in the "Redeem your code" page and received the following error message:
"You can't apply this Premium code to your account. This is likely because you have an existing Premium subscription that cannot be combined with a Premium code."
I have the premium individual plan currently, and from my understanding, that is the one I should be able to use a gift card on, so what's the problem here???

[crunchfrog · Accepted solution]

I learned from Spotify Support today that as long as you have an upcoming billing date, you cannot apply a gift card to your account. This basically affects anyone who is paying for a Premium Individual plan, since the gift cards are only good for Premium Individual.

So cancel your next bill—so in theory your account would lapse on that date—and then apply the gift card. You won't lose any of your Spotify plan benefits when you cancel your next bill.

[crunchfrog]

OscarDC, unfortunately, this answer did not help me. I drove back to the store to confirm that they had activated the card (they had), and I entered all the letters and digits correctly and without spaces.

My problem was that as an active Spotify Premium Individual plan subscriber, I needed to cancel my next monthly bill. Then Spotify would let me apply the gift card. Spotify Support (Gaby) informed me of this in chat, and she said she'd take feedback to the team to hopefully add a note to the spotify.com/us/redeem/ page.

Furthermore, it is surprising to me that I must "cancel" my subscription to apply a gift card. I would expect a gift card to just "extend" my next billing date by a month or a year. I think the billing infrastructure should not discriminate between free and paid accounts (those with a billing date). When a friend or family member gives me a Spotify gift card I expect to just apply the credit to my account so that it just extends when my next bill will be. Especially over the holidays, friends and family members give Spotify gift cards to those they know are already Spotify subscribers. Sadly the error message on the redemption page is baffling, and the required action for Spotify Premium subscribers (cancel your next bill) doesn't seem to make much sense. (To extend your subscription, you must first cancel it.)

[loveengle]

This seems unethical. Why can we not apply our gift cards to the account? It shouldn't matter what kind of plan we have. And cancelling it first is not a good solution. What is the true story? Spotify has an extra $30 of our money.....

[crunchfrog]

Not unethical, just confusing and inconvenient. You don't actually lose any of your paid-for time. It just means that if you did nothing else but cancel, your paid-for service would revert to the ad-supported free service on the day your credit card _would have_ been charged.

[#8]

I’ve had Spotify Premium for over a year. Recently I’ve purchased a gift card for 12 months of Premium. When I follow the process to redeem the card via Spotify.com/redeem I get an error message saying: “You can't apply this Premium code to your account. This is likely because you have an existing Premium subscription that cannot be combined with a Premium code.”
The website says you can use gift cards to pay for premium…
Please help.

[BigTuna40]

I had this annoying issue myself. I am under the 18 month limit and tried the gift card and got the same message. I was able to chat with support and they stated that the issue is you can't have a current subscription/billing date for a premium subscription and use a gift card code. What support did via chat is cancel my subscription which ultimately just removed my credit card info and then they were able to add the gift card. Now all I have to do is add another gift card code whenever I need to reup my time as long as it's under the 18 month stacking limit. I know it sounds confusing to cancel your subscription but having a billing date is what is causing the issue. When you cancel your subscription you keep all your plan and time left. This process just removes your credit card from what I can see. If you are hesitant I suggest chatting with them and they will help you apply the code and adjust the subscription. Hope this helps. 

[DarkHorseDre]

I have this issue and it seems there is a problem with the Spotify redeem process.

I do NOT have a subscription, instead I am gifted gift cards every year (usually 4x £30 or similar amounts).

This year I was gifted 13x £10 (as there was a bug on the Amazon site).

I had 6 days left of my current premium account (provided by GCs) and I was able to redeem the first 4x £10 gift cards.

I received the above error, which actually does not reflect the system issue that exists.

I contacted support via chat (QQ) and they were able to add the same GCs to my account.

I don't know what the issue is but it seemed to relate to adding more than a certain number of gift cards at once to my account

[MixdZai]

Hello I need help 

[Rajroy1]

Coupon code is not applied