Another view to this whole vanilla thing is that maybe it just ran its course. Faster than anticipated but still ran.
I mean it could also have been worse... Chase or bluebird or others could have held up our funds, closed all kinds of accounts, filed fraud and sar reports and pulled a netspend by making countless people wait for a month or longer for their money back.
Instead the vanillas were just pulled. Bleeding stopped at the source. T&cs changed-- like when UA capped the bonus limit on last years' MOM promo only in a way a lot quieter because no Vanilla Insider posted on flyertalk.
But i bet one read the blogs or all these posts.
Most who may have considered getting the bb at wmt were among a rare set of folk who do cash checks legitimately but cutrently have no bank means. Most other wmt check cashing folk are probably illicit and therefore reluctant to get even the bb card.
Since its so new, however, this also leaves us with the bulk of people doing it--and the first users of bill pay with it at wmt, and that would be all of us.
Walmart is not necessarily proven to be the fault here... Do you think the regular check cashing population was buying vanillas? No it was just us doing that. The bb is still good for dd load and debit card bill pay.
If this does continue to tumble, the next thing well see are the debit card banks no longer giving miles or blocking them for certain things