FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Visa/MasterCard Gift Cards at Staples(2017 onwards)
Old Nov 2, 2018, 5:29 pm
  #882  
jack101
 
Join Date: Oct 2014
Posts: 34
Another warning of USB MCGC at Staples. I bought multiples in a store last Sat and the cards all looked normal and activated successfully. Went to the Walmart and tried four and none worked. Went home and called. The first customer service wouldn't tell me anything, just told me he can activate two cards for me in one phone call and then I had to call back again to activate other cards two at a time. The second customer service told me the cards were not activated because they had been "scanned" before being purchased and she can submit a ticket to activate two cards for me.

Those cards can't be checked for balance or activation status (in their words, scanned) unless someone knows the 3 digit security code. This incident affirmed my long time suspicion that USB's system was compromised in some way after reading all those horror stories. I picked those pink ones and thought they were newer than the black and gold ones and must have lower chance of being compromised. But I was wrong. I checked those cards. They had sequential serial numbers and sequential account numbers. (There were two cards that were not in the sequence and actually had balance and were activated successfully at Staples.) You can deduce all of them from one card. But the security codes were obviously random or by some algorithm and the only way they were leaked would be that the system was compromised. Another possibility is the cards were read by some card reader. I doubt this will happen in my region and the meta cards never had this problem.

Last edited by jack101; Nov 2, 2018 at 6:55 pm
jack101 is offline