That's exactly what I've been doing for a long time, but I got shut down. I'm posting about it as a data point for others to know, since I also believed what you are saying above, but now I have personal evidence to the contrary. MVD is a crap shoot. But IMO, at least it's a less malignant crap shoot than Netspend was, or GoBank. You have a fighting chance to last for a while - altho we do have reports of people getting shut down right off the bat without "breaking the rules" - and even when you do get shut down, you get fair warning and can spend down your balance.

If you don't mind (and you may have already and I just missed it), would you be willing to share more details about the specific pattern you had? e.g., how much per month were you cycling, how many "normal" (buying milk, etc.) transactions per month? Were you doing CA exclusively, and what was your max amount? Thanks!

Load $1 - 2K, usually $2K. Over the next 3 -5 days, make several small credit card charges. Then BP at WM for about half the balance on the account. Over the next 3 - 5 days, several more small charges. BP at WM for the rest, always leaving ~$20. Over the next several days, or weeks, a couple more small charges. After that, load $1 - $2K. Repeat. On average loaded/unloaded maybe $4K/month on any given card, never in a hurry.

Never loaded the daily max, never immediately unloaded. Stopped doing CAs a while ago when the CA based purges first started happening. I thought those were the keys issues, since I was avoiding looking like I was doing the frantic load/unload cycle. I lasted for a long time, but...oh well.

Also, doing small charges didn't make any difference. I've made small charges on cards in several other programs where I've gotten shut down and it didn't help: I would try to make the case that I was "just using the card the way it was intended, by charging items and paying bills". The CSR would put me on hold, and come back and say, too bad, you're account is closed. I'd counter with "hey, I don't understand, I haven't done anything wrong, I have don't anything against the Terms & Conditions that your own company has published". They'd still just say "you're not using the card the was it was intended". it's frustrating, but the T&C's always have a clause that says they can blacklist you simply if they feel like it. The point is, once they spot you doing larger than average loads and larger than average unloads, they don't care that you've done a few piddly charges to make it look good. It won't make them change their mind. I have no idea if the small charges help you last longer before you get on their radar, but I know for a fact, over 3 or 4 different programs, that once you DO get on their radar, the small charges won't save you.

If MVD need more fees, all they have to do is ask...Locking up access to clients funds is bad business practice.

AmEx Blue Bird makes -0- fees from me and never complain about the float, free BillPay no need to run for CA or MO. Hmmmmm!

Agreed. Assuming the same company was getting the fee for the VRs that I used to load my MVDs, I know that they were making a profit off me, esp since MVD doesn't even have a their own free billpay feature. Any time I liquidated, there was yet another fee paid.

Not necessarily. Jacking up the per-transaction fee or implementing a monthly fee could deter the type of customers they seek (ones who are profitable with many small charges but would balk at higher ones).

Thanks for the detail. Your report is the first I've seen that pretty closely matches what I presume would avoid shut-downs. Indeed, it did for you for a long time. You did say that you have multiple cards... that could possibly be a factor, especially as they shut them all at once (I think you said that). Also, not sure how the BP weighs in versus a CA. For now, I'm still going strong... our cards are under different people and we do a bit less volume than you did. We'll see how long it lasts.

They face heavy fines if they do not maintain a defensible AML program. Suspicious behavior needs to be examined, documented and reported - what does it cost to pay an analyst per hour to do that? Upper management was probably shitting bricks when they found out people have been running 100K plus through individual cards - that is, if anyone had the balls to tell upper management. So why don't they just reduce daily/monthly/yearly load amounts and be done with it? As with their other decisions the answer is probably incompetence.

First card shut down at the first of the month after $45k+ since June/July. Bought second card with $500 load. Received personalized card in the mail and loaded $2500 in two days and cashed 2x$2748. Login is not active. Looks like this card has made it to the spend down crowd too. Oh well.

The whole reason I'm reporting my shut down is that I too thought my pattern would avoid shut down detection. I think a lot of us were thinking that avoiding max loads & unloads, and avoiding immediate loads and unloads, and perhaps avoiding CAs would thus avoid a shut down. My experience shows that, as far as I'm concerned, there really is no reliable way to last forever manufacturing spend on the MVD. It's a game of chance.

However, I think we do have plenty of evidence that doing rapid max loads and unloads, and going heavy on the CAs will get you shut down much quicker.

Spend Down
 

Spend down

01/26/2014 Vanilla TopUp Redeem $500.00
01/26/2014 Vanilla TopUp Redeem $500.00
01/22/2014 Vanilla TopUp Redeem $500.00
01/20/2014 Vanilla TopUp Redeem $500.00
01/15/2014 Wal-Mart Store Bill pay

It was just a back to back load.

Any chance of getting this usable again? Any chance they just want info?

Disagree, what evidence?

There is no rhyme or reason.....only opinions and theories.

MVD is no more a viable tool for MS, and hope the moderators take proper action.

making several small charges kills the slim profit margin...makes no sense to do that

Random question: What happens if you try to load a VR to a card that doesn't accept it? Does the VR site give you some sort of an error?

Not if you're buying VRs for 5% and have maxed out BB & Serve avenues.