Can I set Amazon to NOT use my GC balance?

[ckmk47]

I have a gift card balance.  amazon automatically uses that for  my order unless I 'change' the payment method - which requires several clicks and a scroll.
Is there a way to set my account NOT to use my balance?  I'd like to use my Freedom card this quarter.  And I'd rather use my card directly, rather than  use it to buy more Amazon GCs, because I might as well get Chase backing my purchase.

[yaakovl]

Pre-order an expensive book coming out in a year and use your gc. Cancel the order when you want to use your balance again.

[ckmk47]

Do you know that this works?
The way I've seen, amazon doesn't actually charge the GC or CC until the item is ready to be shipped.

[yaakovl]

Click on the order on a pc, it will give you an option to apply the gc towards the order.

[ckmk47]

OK
How do I find a book to preorder?
Figured it out myself, so I'll share for anyone else doing this:
At the left of Amazon's search bar toggle from 'all departments' to 'books'.  Click the magnifying glass to search, even though the search box is empty.
In the left menu (under 'show results for',  'New Releases' ) find and click 'coming soon'.
There's a 'sort by', but 'price high to low' didn't seem to work.  I sorted by publication date and found some medical books coming out in Oct.


I ordered and it used up my GC.  I then set up another purchase and it used my cc and didn't offer to use my GC. YAY!  Thank you, yaakovl !


As an added point, if you've paid with a cc and it hasn't shipped yet, if you put in a GC to  your account, you can go to your order and click to add the GC to the order.