lwildernorva

At low levels, probably not. Approach the $50K max, I wouldn't be surprised to start seeing Chase asking for some more information about the ongoing revenues of your "business." Since many businesses run on a 60% overhead figure (including employee salaries, rent, utilities, equipment replacement costs, etc.), are you prepared to show that your business's annual gross income approaches at least $80K?

josephstern

Why does everyone here assume OD pays Incomm face value for loads? Have we seen evidence of that?

Do people think OD pays Apple face value for iTunes cards?

Further, where does the assumption that OD gets the $3.95 come from?

broadwayblue

Interesting point. But cash and itunes have different intrinsic values, no? I guess the question is, how does Vanilla make its money?

st.exupery

It's my understanding that all Money Pass ATMs are free (at least for the moment). In that case you don't need direct deposit.

dcpilgrim

Looks like I'll be doing the same.

frozyn

This is only good until November 4th, when Amex will start charging $2 for every ATM transaction. Then you'll need DD.

zanzibar

This guy probably has more readers than any of the popular frequent flyer bloggers:

http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/frequ...w-opportunity/

If this thing is shut down before I even get my Ink card (applied almost two weeks ago and still waiting), I might as well buy a bottle of Scotch as my first purchase on the new Ink card and celebrate hours of time wastage.

ma91pmh

his alexa ranking in the us is 18,933

mms is 11,198 in the us

tpg is 9,443 in the us

alexa rankings are like golf scores, lower are better

either way that's a lot of people reading about the deal

st.exupery

In that case I'll ask my brokerage (Fidelity) to direct deposit. Unless people are having luck with Bill Pay or ACH.

zanzibar

I wonder if Alexa can be off by a lot? Alexa, Compete, Google Webmaster Tools/Analytics and my own website host provider's AWStats all give totally different stats for my own site's popularity so I have never trusted any of them fully.

Another reason I doubt Alexa is because CG has 92k Twitter followers, versus less than 3k for MMS (and less than 2k for FM, the most valuable of them all). And CG posts links to his site/blog almost daily on his Twitter feed. The multiplier effect of 92k Tweeters has got to be tremendous.

y2chen

Sure, and that's completely valid. But that's also a completely different issue, is it not? If you were to put $50k of OD spending on the card, it wouldn't matter how you were paying off the card, you could get questioned by Chase. My point is a review by Chase or Amex or any card issuer wouldn't be tied to how those bills get paid, which goes back to my original point: why all the concern about paying cc bills using your BB balance?

I'll add that I won't be doing this. I'd rather use what funds I can load to take over other bill payments like rent/mortgage/utilities/etc. If there were a more abundant supply of beans around here, then I'd probably wander further into this direction.

The_Wrath_of_Khan

Well, they set a 250,000 point a year limit for $50,000 in spending. That really limits the liability. I've spent hundreds of thousands on Chase cards so I hope they'll not mind.

Million Mile Secrets

Of *course* it is the fault of he who must not be named, but referred to only as "MMS" lest other "deals" be eviscerated.

After all, who else posts a "deal" in the morning only to have it dead by afternoon? [Insert maniacal evil laugh! ]

Mrgolfer21

If you have a good history with the card company, I don't think they are going to question a whole lot. I have spent a lot of money compared to my annual income on Amex, and they have never called me once to question the charges. I pay them off every month, so maybe that helps. I understand that if you spend $50k at one store on this card, that could raise a flag. But nothing says you can't use the card for other expenses other than your own business. There is a reason they put the 5x spend at certain stores on there...so people use their card there instead of others. People can always say that they are spending a lot there b/c their own person job reimburses them and they get the extra points (you don't have to say what you are buying)...If they say you can't do that and shut you down, that's just bad business (but certainly within their right).

I personally pull out my ink card when I usually use other one...simply to show i'm using it, and not just using it at OD. I think the doom and gloom is a little far fetched, but I do agree, depending on how much chase could be losing, that they limit it like Amex did. But i think getting shut down simply b/c you used the card exactly how they advertised is going to be limited to a very small percentage, and there will be other reasons involved, not just that you were spending money at OD.

lwildernorva

I think that most of the people who will be doing circular use of this wouldn't come anywhere close to putting $50K per year on the card for normal business expenses. So, one of the red flags is likely to be a sudden increase in monthly spending at OD from $50/month to $4000 per month (or even $1000). Not direct evidence that you're laundering funds (buy with Chase, use card to pay Chase, rinse, repeat with the same $4000 every month) but enough smoke that Chase will start looking for fires. And although none of the business credit card issuers normally asks for much verification of business income, they all reserve the right to do so.

Because I'm sure that just like many of the other threads here, there are Chase reps that keep an eye on these threads just to see what the current tricks are so they can determine which ones they want to shut down--and which they don't mind.