terpfan101

That would certainly be plausible and would be great if it's true, however I just can't imagine a few bucks would swing a $500 purchase from loss to profit. They probably pay close to 2% in merchant fees and will I imagine they either get a cut of the merchant fees on each swipe of the gift card or receive a cut of each one sold, I doubt it'd be significant.

cbn42

I personally don't believe for a moment that this is being shut down due to mileage nuts abusing it. It is probably technical problems, lack of profitability, or some other issue.

First of all, Chase doesn't own OD. I doubt Chase credit cards provide enough business for OD for them to care what Chase thinks. If OD was making money selling these cards, why would they stop just because a bank asks them to?

If Chase really had an issue with this, there are several other, less drastic things they could have done. They could have individually shut down people who were abusing it. They could have placed a quarterly cap, like Amex BCP just did. They could have changed the structure of Ink Bold rewards in some other way. If all else failed on their end, they could have asked OD to stop letting people pay for these gift cards with credit cards.

I don't think "we" are the cause of this. There are other reasons for this move, and "we" are just the bystanders that got hit.

nwflyboy

Respectfully disagree.

Someone posted over the weekend that he was chatting with the manager of his local OD, and as he put it (I'm paraphrasing) "I got the clear impression that blogs with circles and arrows that turn FT readers into armies of mindless robots stripping the racks of these cards" as he put it "really infuriated them".

We know that the various companies read FT and the blogs. They know what we're doing, and I can easily see them getting pretty pissed off about it.

Put yourself in their position. Seeing blogs with photos of VR cards fanned out with smiles and red arrows isn't going to make them look very good.

ThePointsCollector

went back to OD store where I bought $500's last night and today they are all gone.

Bikeguy

SO, OD got it's feelings hurt and pulled the cards they were making a profit on just because.

Not in a capitalist society...

6am at ORD

It helps explain why. They are on the lookout for money laundering, so they are trained to notice people and patterns. Talking about the 5% everywhere idea is a logical explanation. A few OD people have asked me for more information on the idea (with ideas of trying themselves). I wasn't the first person buying large amounts on an Ink card and it sticks out.

j9jm3

$500 dollar gift cards are dead. Finally found one OD with the Vanilla cards with the 5.95 activation fee. Decided to just get them anyhow, go the register and CASH, CHECK, or DEBIT only. I was stunned. Cashier pointed to a sign right by the gift cards. New policy at least at this OD in the past few days. Left sad...

shoreline

If they were making a profit, it apparently was not enough.

I do not think the profit margin (if any existed) was enough. In fact, I think OD was losing money.


3 of the 4 OD's I visited last weekend and spoke with managers stated this as the reason why. (people by the mass quantities in thousands with a CC and they were losing money).

nwflyboy

To be sure, if they were making a lot of money on these (off of us), they would still be selling them. But somebody eventually figured out that they way these were being exploited did not match up with their expected sales model and they clearly decided that they were not making enough to keep doing it.

The fact that if you googled the product, the first 15 hits that came up were pictures of Emily smirking as she clutched a fistful of them only made someone at Corporate look like an idiot for not putting a stop to this - not good for their career prospects. So they put a stop to it so they wouldn't look like such a complete fool to their boss.

Rubbing their noses in it didn't help. Basic human nature. Imagine yourself as the guy who has to account for this to his boss.

DavidSkaggs

LOL

I agree, though...as paranoid as it sounds, a corporate decision makes sense. Although, I wouldn't just take an OD Managers personal opinion all too seriously. I doubt corporate let it's store managers know that it was because it was being abused by a bunch of flyer talkers.

marktelefono

Confirmed. If you are using $50 cards, you can only use six, and then for the remaining swipe use another credit card for the remaining $203.95

FreeMilesTraveler

Can't find any cards here in the south Denver area...... Another one bites the dust!

LAX88

Store managers don't make decisions like this. Where do these ideas come from?

This makes sense.

JudyJFLA

I found one vanilla visa in the gold wrapper hidden among the other cards today at OD here in Fort Myers, I think they missed it when pulling them. I took it up along with some shell cards and loaded $500 without incident.

Judyjfla

farwest101

Exactly. There are packs of hyenas who pounce on the cards whenever they find them. I had one stocked with well over 100 on Friday. I literally picked the last 2 today. I was looking around to see if any had been "hided", but no luck.

So that was ~$50K that went out the door in less than 5 days from one store in a very quiet neighborhood. Every time I had been in there, there weren't more than a handful of people - usually walked right up to the lone cashier (who often isn't even at the register - usually stocking shelves). Tell me that won't raise eyebrows at home office when the monthly report comes in. I bet that store didn't do $50K in normal sales in a week (other than prescriptions).

Now I know why people might want to "hided" these cards. If for no other reason, than to slow the goldrush activities of the usual nimrods who don't have a clue.

Goldrush mentality at it's finest...