The strategy for these is that they're a one-time play.. hit it hard and huge and fast. I only bought a total of about $6k last year, over the course of several weeks and got shut-down basically as soon as I liquidated them (i.e. I tried to buy more and was refused).

Haven't been able to buy any since. I even called and talked to someone at some point, I was so incensed. Discrimination, I tell you!!! :mad: :rolleyes:

Is there any other way of knowing if I was banned or no? Bought 3 cards 1 day after previous promo has ended, paid fee (had to meet the minimum spend). Was a big hassle filling all the papers and dealing with rude AAA employees at Manhattan's Columbus Circle Location. Now I'd like to find out if I was banned before giving them a chance to treat me like a points scammer

hitting it hard and fast is a legitimate strategy. Maybe give AAA the middle finger and charge back their membership fee once they ban you. The drawback, here, of course is that you might have Metabank prepaid reloadable cards closed on you. It's not like the deal is that great to where you want to subject yourself to that much downside.

Why would you cancel your AAA membership? AAA is not shutting you down, Metabank is. AAA is just an innocent bystander :D

In my case I will probably let my AAA expire this spring. I know AAA is not the problem here but honestly I don't find a whole lot of value in their membership anymore. I get insurance though USAA which AAA cannot touch, their free guidebooks are mostly meh, and USAA roadside assistance for $17 x 3/year for each of our cars is significantly more generous than AAA towing (I found this out accidentally when I needed a tow recently) and covers the car not the driver so DW can use them too. The only two reasons I renewed this year was hotel discounts and giftcards. Got blacklisted right after renewing and I am not sure the hotel discount alone is worth it alone since I don't use it that much.

Guess who is sharing your data with Metabank?
Does the other places that sell Metabank GCs give information to Metabank? No, so why does AAA have to do it?

Another reason is that the AAA employees are sometimes rude when we are trying to buy GCs. Maybe you haven't run into the rude employees.

I actually just ran into this issue today. I bought 2 Giftcards yesterday with the promotional zero activiation fee for $500 (was told I met my GC limit for the day) . I was told their holiday promotion started on Nov and end sometime in Dec. So today I wanted to buy 1 more GC and was told the systems were down. When I inquired more to find out when they thought it would be up and running, andother agent came in and I was told that I can no longer buy anymore since I maxed purchase ability. So I started asking questions to better understand like is this the max for the promotion alone, what if i bought smaller denominations, etc. That agent was starting to get rude with me (I see others on this forum encounter the same thing). Apparently the agent got a company email the previous week advising them of limiting customers due to money laundering issues. THen the agent starts to tell me that I can no longer get GCs and I was trying to get more clarification and she kept being rude and unclear. SO i walked out. I was happy to get at least 2 GC but there is no policy anywhere about restrictions and such so who the heck knows what is really going on.

NOTHING beats USAA, but to me, AAA's roadside assistance is like a separate insurance policy for me. It is really helpful because I am single, so if I ever get a flat, my battery dies, etc., I do not have to bother a friend or wait until one of them gets out of work, school, etc.

I would also never get USAA's roadside assistance program. Call me paranoid, but I do not need to give them any excuse to raise my rates.

Different situations may warrant different approaches. Your paranoia on using insurance policies for road side assistance is not unfounded in general but USAA hasn't to date included in their rates for me (I have used it twice in the last 10 years) and they don't report it to CLUE. They are also far more generous on the free towing allowance which is important to me because I do most of my own work on cars and so I generally want to have them brought back to my house and not some nearby garage. As with everything in life YMMV.

I'm in a similar boat as you, I'm sure not walking 10 miles each way to the auto parts store :p

I stopped in the Tysons Corner (VA) office today. She said $1,000 is the limit, per household. She looked at my account and said I had already purchased my limit (and then some) during my run last weekend in Alexandria.

She didn't say I was banned, just met the limit.

I plan on trying Nashville and NY/CT on a couple of business trips coming up. They didn't have a limit at the Scarsdale office when I was there in May.

Assuming you aren't banned putting a limit on it makes a lot more sense than just banning folks when they cross some invisible line and accusing them of fraud. I mean Metabank had a lot more data on me from AAA and thus less risk of fraud than when I get their cards elsewhere.

Just curious, but for those who got shutdown/pushback from Metabank, was it entirely due to a certain method of liquidation i.e. BB loads?

Used 2k AA visa gc's to load my Serve (my name) at Walmart via registers on 12/24.

Today, in a different city, I tried to load 500 AAA visa GC to my SO's Serve (her name) at Walmart via registers but was denied for "Invalid PIN". I tried this 3 more times at 2 different Walmarts using 3 different AAA visa GC's and was rec'd "Invalid PIN" on all attempts. 1 of these cards, I called and re-entered the PIN and then tried at Walmart again and rec'd the same error. All 4 of these AAA visa GCs were bought at the same time.


Anyone ever encounter this before?

My only hypothesis is that b/c these AAA cards literally have my name and address attached to them and I'm trying to load a Serve card in a different name (though same address), that it is kicking it out as an "Invalid PIN".

Am a little worried about cashing these out now.