stils

I know this is going a little overboard... but could I pay my $11K Federal taxes with bill pay? Just have bluebird send them a check? I guess it would be too easy for something to get screwed up since you're not sending in the slip with it.

Autolycus

Bluebird limits your total balance to $10k, so you couldn't do a single check for $11k. If you wanted to do a full $10k check and a second check from a different account, I recommend having BB issue the check payable to IRS but provide your mailing address. Actually, I recommend doing that for any tax payment, so you can be sure the check is properly mailed with whatever "coupon" or return it needs to go with.

sgideons

There's also a limit of "$5,000 per month in the case of non-registered payees."

crimsonAA

I know that some have reported that CVS sort of gets "tired" of a credit card after too much use and folks get an alternate tender message even though the card was not declined by the issuer.

Any idea how much it takes, either in dollar terms or number of transactions, for this to happen?

ctbarron

IME, you're safe at slightly over $6k and around 20 transactions done over less than 2 months. But who knows what the future holds...

GatorBlues

I had missed that apparent limitation. I need to pay $10,000 for my kid's elementary school tuition in June, which does not take credit or debit cards, so I've been slowly loading the BB account this year so that I can pay the tuition through it. I was going to have BB cut a check to the school. Is it correct that I can't do that in one $10K check? If so, can I have them send a check made out to the school to my address in May for half of the tuition and then have them send a second check in June for the other half?

supergrandslam

Is it too risky to pay off credit card bill that I'm actually buying the VRs with?
(Suppose that about 50% of the bill is from VRs.)

So far I haven't seen any post from who got CC account closed by doing that.
I am thinking of Citi and Chase CC if it matters.

dublin487

this has been discussed previously, but personally, i've done this for all cards with which i bought VRs, other than amex, my reason being that since BB runs through amex's system, there may be more adverse visibility there...

crimsonAA

Well, I seem to have issues doing more than about $2000 in a four- or five-day period. I get alternate tender required, even though the issuer doesn't report a decline. Thoughts?

GatorBlues

I did two sets of two VRs this morning on the same card in two back to back transactions because I was too lazy to go back another day. I meant to put two on my Citi card and two on my Amex, but I wasn't paying attention and put both transactions of just over $1K each on my Citi card. I promptly got a fraud call from Citi. It was no big deal. Once they verified that the charges were legit, they were fine with it. I put lots of other expenses on the card too, so it's not like I'm doing Charlie Victoria Sally and nothing else, so that probably helped. Indeed, they asked me to verify the electric bill charge I put on the card for the first time today too. Next month, I'll be more careful to not do two transactions on the same day on the same card.

My personal view is that moderation is important. I'm putting a couple thousand per month in VRs on each of two cards until I get up to the $10K in my BB that I need to pay my kid's tuition, which can't be paid by credit or debit. I'm not going crazy to generate multiple thousands in spend just so I can withdraw it or pay off the card itself in a true churn. I think the latter is risky, and given that I drive $120K in legitimate business and personal expenses through my cards, I don't want to risk cancellations over getting greedy.

crimsonAA

OK. I've talked to the fraud dept. in the past, but when I called this time to ask about the decline, they said the merchant never actually submitted the card for processing. Could have been a fluke. CVS said alternate tender required for 2 cards, but let me purchase 1. (This was the day after I had purchased two.)

bobfather

This is not accurate. CVS has no systems in place for declining specific cards, at least not at the store level.

People who have reported that their card has been blocked by CVS have successfully determined that it was actually their card-issuer blocking for fraud-related reasons.

crimsonAA

OK. Well, at least in my case, it was not the card issuer blocking for fraud-related reasons. I did not receive a text message, and the issuer had no record of a declined charge for the amount in question. I'll chalk it up to a fluke.

AnitaBryant63

At the store level, CVS systems would not even know. And just a data point that I picked up from a recent trip. CVS registers allow for 7 cards to be used in one transaction and the registers can determine the balance on the gift cards. I'm not sure if they will do the same for Prepaid cards such as Bluebird though.

particlemn

in the last 4 months i have paid citi, chase(bus and personal) and amex(bus and personal) with BB all of which had VR charges from cvs on them, the VR charges were not the only charges on any of them, i try to spread, i think we here think to critically about these things the banks have many rtansactions and are looking for large problems not small problems,