I also bought a Southwest gift card from Paypal ($200 in December 2016) and it says it's an invalid claim link. It’s been a nightmare and I still have no solution after communicating with literally 10 different reps.
After several days of emailing back and forth with customer service and them responding about the wrong transaction entirely, they said that I had to call them. After 20 minutes on hold and talking someone who had no idea what I was talking about, I was transferred to someone who confidently said that it was no problem and that he'd have a new one sent out “within five minutes.” I thought the ordeal was finally over! Over an hour later, I had gotten nothing so I emailed them again. They said the gift card was already fully claimed. Not true -- I checked and double-checked all of my Southwest travel receipts (there was only one for me and my partner) and at no time was a gift card used. I even looked at our credit card statements to make sure our airfare was fully paid with the credit card. A supervisor emailed me saying I had to contact Southwest. Obviously I can’t do that without the actual gift card code, so I started a chat session to see if I could finally get that much. After being transferred to various chat reps (one of which was very rude), they told me there’s nothing they could do but make sure a supervisor called me. I’m still waiting on that but not holding my breath on them helping.
After this nonsense, I will literally never use Paypal again, and I've been using them since 2005. My next course of action will be to file a dispute with the credit card I used through Paypal and then file a complaint with the FTC. People have always said Paypal is a sketchy company and now I know why.
