I had over $1,000 in gift card balance, ready to buy something AND LOCKED ME OUT OF THE ACCOUNT
It's been over 24 hours, support DID NOT contact me at all, and they just said an "account specialist" had to work out the problem an they would email or call
Hmmmmm. How did you get the gift cards? Cheap cards from here, I assume?
all had cash paid receipts
These people all are buying Bitcoin at a huge premium (sometimes as much as ~20%), why do you think this is? Regardless of the "proof" that the AGC that you are buying are legit, the bottom line is that they are not, otherwise the sellers would have no reason to pay cash to buy a gift card and then buy Bitcoin at a premium, especially when ads for other cash payment methods buy Bitcoin at a discount, and you can even buy Bitcoin for cash by responding to ads for a much smaller premium.
Unless you genuinely think the seller is actually giving away money then any Amazon gift card that you buy from a seller who sells large amounts of these gift cards is not going to be legit. Period.
but there's always some people who don't know. What if no sellers are close to them and no Bitcoin ATMS or they want to do it anonymously? Or they got gift card as a gift and want bitcoin? or expect bitcoin to rally