Originally Posted by
jmandc
I bought a $250 VGC on giftcard.com to try it out and the LPs showed up in about 24 hours. I attempted to load my Venmo account and while the gift card showed up, it wouldn't process when I tried to pay someone with it as my payment method. I panicked and added the $250 to Amazon (adding it as a payment option and then buying a $250 reload of my gift card balance). I have been buying Amazon gift cards at Safeway which earns 2x Safeway points and 4x on AMEX Gold (which translates to $15 off groceries and 2000 AMEX points per $500). The same with VGCs costs about $12 and earns about 2,000 LPs/miles if I use my AA card as well which is nice but not as lucrative as the Safeway/AMEX route.
I'm not sure why you panicked. You were trying to do manufactured spend; that's not going to work. You can't just liquidate the card to a bank account.
But don't you have actual legitimate spend that doesn't currently earn you bonuses? Monthly utilities? Cell phone bill? Can you pay rent or mortgage by CC? Anything at all that you can pay online or by phone, that normally earns you 1 mile or point per dollar? There is a $2k per month maximum here so there's probably no need to resort to MS.