MileHighCanuck

Standard boilerplate: I've spent the last half hour trying to find a reference to this specific problem on FlyerTalk, so please, no "we already talked about this" flames.

Thanx.

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Okay, I've recently had some odd experiences reloading my & my wife's BB cards at the local Wal-Mart. Fortunately for me, our Wal-Mart has a Money Center Kiosk. I would rather use the kiosk and have it take twice as long, if it means avoiding the dice-roll that is a Wal-Mart human employee at the MC desk.

My BB process involves buying $200 Visa GC's at a local OM with my Ink, then loading these GC's onto our BB's using the MC kiosk. I am very aware of the $1000/$5000 reload limits, and keep careful records to make sure I'm keeping my nose clean. Then, we use the BB's for rent payments, car loan payments, bill payments, and credit card payments (NOT to AmEx), with an occasional purchase tossed in. We've also occasionally made payments to each other (once every month or two). We haven't been churning money back and forth, we haven't been buying money orders, weren't not withdrawing all our BB funds out from an ATM, and we haven't linked any checking accounts (we also don't have direct deposit set up). This strategy has worked well for months.

But over the past three to four weeks, the MC Kiosk has grown unreliable. Again, I know for a certainty that we're NOT violating the $1000/$5000 limit.

For example, I'll load a couple of $200 Visa GC's to my BB as debit cards - no problems - and then on the third, the Kiosk will display a "Invalid Card" message. Repeating the reload attempt will get the same failed result. Usually, after this happens, I've gone up to the MC desk to load the GC's manually. One of three things happens:

(1) The GC's load without issue. For some reason, the Kiosk wouldn't allow that specific GC load, but the MC registers had no problem.
(2) Reload fail due to manager/cashier ignorance. MC customer support truly is terrible; the folks behind the desk are not trained, or they're not consistently trained, and they don't know the BB policies. I don't argue with them; I've never had anything positive happen from including *more* Wal-Mart employees into the process.
(3) A couple of times I've actually had a Wal-Mart MC manager who seems to know the BB rules, but she's claimed that their computer system is hooked into Homeland Security computers (Jeebus, what isn't these days?) and that some kind of government banking software is raising a flag, because I might be a terrorist (Yeah, right.)

In cases (2) and (3), I've simply walked away, waited 24-48 hours, and retried the GC load at the Kiosk, usually with no issues.

I don't want to talk about customer service behind the desk at Wal-Mart. It's Wal-Mart. It's terrible. Period. End of sentence.

What I want to discuss is your experiences using the Money Center kiosk. What would cause an "Invalid Card" message, on a BB card that was clearly valid, working, and a BB account that was not locked down?