yes and it worked in my favor as an order placed a day before their recent 3% "sale" came in/registered for a day later

Nice. I may try and spread out my orders more now. One of the 2 orders appears to not have tracked, but I'm not sure which one it is. Do I put in a claim for the first order, the second order, or just put it in for both (knowing that one will be rejected).

Yep, I did and a little over a week later I received all the cards. I don't think I'll ever place a large order with GCM again and if I continue to have tracking issues I might just stop it altogether. I stopped with GC.com as it wasn't worth the hassle for me especially given the higher fees (8.81 per card on gc.com vs 5.95 on gcm).

When you put in the claim on TCB it shows a host of times when you clicked through to go to GCM. It is pretty user friendly in that regard. Just do your best to tie in the time that is reflected in your initial email acknowledging order when u bought from GCM. But I get that might not help.

I would continue buying as you were but vary the amounts even by 1.00 so as to better determine what order is tracking

Yeah, that's probably a good strategy. I think I'm just going to spread out the purchases since I'm doing 3K a week to stay within the 15K every 30 days max and really don't feel like dealing with a non-500 denomination (been there/done that with WellsFargo and Kroger).

It is very odd how the time listed on the TCB email does not correspond to any of the click times. Basically you just have to make an educated guess.

One of these tracked:
Aug 6 11:15
Aug 7 6:31

My TCB email says "07 Aug 2016 19:59." How odd.


EDIT: Of course right after I hit send, I refresh TCB and I now see it tracking. 2 orders listed as August 7 (even though my August 6 order was early in the day). I think its definitely safer spreading out the orders now since it appears sometimes the actual order takes a day to actually reflect.

Makes sense to spread them out given the 15k per rolling 30 day limit

Hard when they have a promo. Especially since the larger nonVGC cashback rate tracks

Yes. It would be great if the blogs would get involved in this.

Best not to involve them at all. They bring the wrong attention and even more that weren't aware and that will cause more problems.

I can't disagree strongly enough.

In general, how long does it take for GCM to ship? I placed an order for just 2 $500 vgc through the TCB portal (Which tracked) and GCM still says processing with an est ship date of August 12. Its the 15th now. The card charge is still pending. From what I read it's not sounding good that it will go through. This is the 1st order I have ever placed with them. It's actually a gift for my son's upcoming wedding. Fingers crossed that it ships.

You can call for the status. It's fairly easy to get a human on the phone. To be clear, it says "processing" or "processed". It will never update to "shipped" and you will not receive notification of shipping. In my experience, if it tracked then the order was confirmed. However, with all things GCM related, the order may be canceled up to and including the time when you receive it.

So weird part on GCM... I placed my usual $2.5 order last week.. received a phone call a couple days earlier asked about what I am dong with it and the CSR said she would approve it. I saw the order pending on my credit card.

Now the charge fell off and didn't posted.

I called in and they said the cards are processing and have been created. They need someone to sign off on it due to the dollar amount. BUt I suspect it got canceled even though I received approval from the CSR who called me.

C'mon dawgs! Sarcasm! It's in the news these days even! Sheesh. Does my reputation not precede me?

As a disclaimer, I'm a Canadian looking to MS in the USA. While I live close the USA, any store that would sell gift cards is at least a 40 minute trip. I have a US Bank and a US based Amex

Ok, so in theory I should be able to buy 2 x $500 Visa Gift Cards for $1011.90 from GCM?

To recap:

Buy VGC from GCM using US Amex.
Ship VGC to my US based PO box.
In theory I should be able to take this either to a USPS or a WM and buy a MO?
I would select "debit" and use the last 4 digits of the card #.
I would buy one MO for $998.40 and use the leftover $1.60 to cover the MO cost?
Take MO's to my US Bank and deposit.

Questions:
1. Is there any registration of any sort required? (There isn't from what I read. I'm Canadian and don't have an SSN so I want to make sure thats not an issue.)
2. Max amount to purchase at a time? I would likely only do $1,000 out of personal comfort level. I'm really only wanting to MS about $5,000 total (not monthly).
3. Any certain design suggested? Hard to know which one is Sunrise vs. Metabank before receiving them.

Do I need to hold on to the Visa Gift Cards I've used in case I need to return anything? How are returns credited if I tossed the used card out?

Also, what is the phone number for customer service? The # on the back of the GCs themselves seem to be 100% automated with no option to speak to a live person. I wanted to ask them the above question. ;)

For anyone wanting to pay southern CA AAA insurance, Visa gift cards are a good way to go because they're recognized as debit cards. Between that and Plastiq I've been able to put 100% of my spending on CCs. :) (Only worth it for sign up bonuses though if you consider the fees)