I had problems with CA and MO this afternoon, as well as uploading VR to MVD this evening. I first thought that I had been shut down. I just talked with a MVD agent over the phone. She said that their IT has been working "furiously" on the system problems all this evening, and my status is "active". All money is there.

i tried to CA at two different banks this afternoon. i thought there might've been an issue. good to see someone has already looked into it.

question: did they indicate that IT was working to fix the CA issues? that's of prime importance to me.

about 2 hours ago. Tried 1 card once, another card twice, same results. Sounds like they had a system issue. Will try again tomorrow.

My previous message was just to confirm the part where I have an account previously shutdown due to doing unloads exclusively via CA earlier this year. I called and they unlocked it, supposedly, for only 48 hours. But it remains unlocked until now and I've been doing loads & unloads from it via MO since with no problems. If CA is working for you, great, keep doing that so save on the fees & extra hassle. My data point is for those who just got shutdown.

Phew, I thought something was wrong on my end. My accounts say active but just got declined for CAs. I will try again tomorrow as well. Thanks for the info.

Yes. two different MVD agents apologized for the problems.

I got hit as well.
My vanilla not working for the first time, tried to do CA at US Bank and no go.

I've had MVD for a while but haven't touched it. Loaded $2500 yesterday and $2500 just today (right after midnight). Works now ... now to figure out how to liquidate safely :)

I've been liquidating almost exclusively via MO purchases, maxing out the debit limits (only time I've done CA is to liquidate when my card has been unexpectedly declined for debit purchases due to newly enforced limits), and have yet to be shut down despite moving larger quantities through the card than some who report shutdowns for CA, and not leaving the funds on the card for more than 10 minutes (I usually go straight from CVS, where I load the VR from my smartphone in the parking lot, to WM to buy MO). I have been doing this for several months. If you buy MO, they don't know what you are buying, unless you go somewhere like USPS which codes it as a cash transaction (you will be able to tell if that happens because you will be charged $1.95 instead of 50 cents), unlike a CA where it's obvious what you are doing. Have yet to see a report from anyone who got shut down who wasn't doing CA to liquidate. Any counterexamples to this?

No experience with MVD specifically since as I mentioned above I have yet to be shut down by them, but in general I've found when you're having issues with funds being tied up for an unreasonable period of time, a complaint to the CFPB can do wonders in getting the funds released sooner. I had a checking account at a major bank closed for doing too many ACH pulls from other accounts (that paid more interest) shortly after funds cleared, and at the time the account was frozen had a balance of between $7k and $8k that they were going to hold for 10 business days before snail mailing me a cashier's check. After a complaint to the CFPB, I got a call the next day saying they were able to investigate and confirm the the funds I had deposited were good, and I could withdraw my full balance in cash at a branch, which I did successfully and without incident. Before the CFPB complaint, I got nowhere. They have a lot of leverage.

The CFPB regulates nonbanks that provide financial services as well, and I'd imagine with prepaid card products such as this which are targeted towards exploiting the underbanked by charging them lots of fees, the CFPB would be eager to get involved and the card issuers would be even less eager to antagonize them. As others mentioned above, they may unlock your account and allow you to withdraw the balance via a cash advance if you call, which is probably the best outcome for you as you could get the money back the same day. I've also seen reports earlier in this thread that whatever the phone reps may say, the $9.95 fee for a check won't be charged if the account closure was initiated by them rather than you. But if they are uncooperative, a CFPB complaint may make any delay or fees in getting your money back magically disappear.

It's probably not true that they are making more money off CA transactions. When you cash advance a card, the swipe fees work in reverse, where the card issuer pays fees to the bank that swipes your card. I don't know how much they are paying to the banks where you CA thousands at a time, but I'd be surprised if it didn't exceed $1.95. Maybe I'll ask the manager, whom I know pretty well after several conversations about my MS activities, if he knows how much they charge the card issuers the next time I'm at the credit union. On the other hand, if you do a PIN debit purchase, they get the 50 cents from you, plus 21 cents from the retailer.

I don't know why you think it makes no difference whether you CA or not. No one knows what exactly triggers a shutdown, and it may vary ("our chief weapon is surprise, surprise and fear, fear and surprise"), but I've read most of the posts in this thread and it seems that a common element between everyone who got shut down is cash advances. Some people get away with larger amounts for a longer period of time, some are shut down faster. But they all liquidated the funds they loaded by CA. And unlike MO purchases where there's no easy way for them to know what you bought at WM or the grocery store, it's trivial for them to write an algorithm which looks for people who just load the cards and cash advance the funds out. As I told Barry2013, I'd be very interested to see an example of someone who got shut down for only MO purchases.

Is there any advantage to purchasing a temporary MVD card at CVS versus simply ordering one on the Vanilla website, and then loading it with VR cards once the permanent card is received in the mail?

Just successfully CA 5K+ this morning.

Nope. Just save yourself the fee and order online :)

There is really no fee savings, assuming you can buy the temp card with a cc.

Can you load the temp card when you order it online? If not then theres no fee at CV since you can load the temp for $500 as if it was a VR. Do they give you your temp # when its done online? with the temp card from CV you can load VRs once you registered the temp and need not wait til the reg card arrives

Ive only gotten mine @ CV and loaded $500 each time

same card that had the trouble yesterday?