Originally Posted by
fly2fish
Perhaps another hint/DP to the Invalid Merchant error:
Yesterday, got the error, and I said, "Oh, did someone load already this morning?" And the friendly/regular manager said, "No, but someone just bought a $500 gift card."
So, my hypothesis is that any loading, whether in or out, counts against the $500/hr store limit. It's a working theory, but now, when I get this error, I will ask not only, "Did someone load before me?" if the answer is "no", I will follow up with, "Did someone just buy a gift certificate?"
It is possible. I have a few more tips here.
1. When you try to load twice and the sum of the two loads exceeds $500, the second load would not be approved at the beginning of the transaction after entering the amount to load, i.e. you have no chance to get to the step to swipe your card
2. I had seen someone loaded $100 in front of me with a different card, and I was able to load $500 to my Bluebird card immediately. So Family Dollar works with multiple reload networks and the limits are independent. Bluebird uses Vanilla reload network IIRC. It is possible that the purchase of an Incomm GC was counted against the limit of Vanilla reload.
Seeing that the "Invalid Merchant" happened so frequently recently, did the Incomm GC sales gained much more popularity at Family Dollar recently? Maybe someone can try to buy a Vanilla GC to test this theory. True or not, the workaround would be loading two $200 separately to improve the chance of a successful load.
Is there more DP's that when a two swipe load failed, the second card did not receive the reversal of the fund? Hopefully someone can find the right dept to speak to about this "Invalid Merchant" issue, also funds not being reversed when the load failed.