nickelfish

I'm trying to hit the 7500K on the new AA card. I bought some regular Visa GC's at the food store. I was able to load the GC's to BB using the pin feature on the VGC. I only loaded 50$ of the 500$ to see if it would work.
I saw another thread here from 2012 that doing this gets your account shut down. Is that still true?
I was also able to buy two MO's using the VGC's pin. I redeposited the larger amount one into my bank. But, now that I'm thinking about it...I didn' even endorse the MO. I just handed the blank MO to her and she deposited it. That can't be good...an unendorsed MO floating around out there.
Thanks

prokopon

Your question could be clearer. Which account is at risk of being shut down, on this 2012 thread you read?

Most people here don't dink around doing multiple transactions with a single VGC. Best strategy is to buy it at or close to the max load (usually $500), since the fee is the same whether you put $20 or $500, and then use it in one fell swoop to buy a MO or billpay or load BB. If you have access to VR to load BB, you're probably better off using the VGC for one of the other options, to make the most out of your 5k monthly load limit per BB card.

WhateverDude

$7,500,000???!?!?!??!

nickelfish

[QUOTE=prokopon;22266776]Your question could be clearer. Which account is at risk of being shut down, on this 2012 thread you read?


Sorry, you're right, it wasn't clear.

I bought a 500$ VGC and loaded 50$ of it onto my new BB acct to see if it would work. It did. So, I guess my question was...why buy VR's (other than a 2$ less fee) if you can load a VGC's onto BB using the pin feature?
I read a thread from 2012 saying don't load VGC's onto BB because they'll shut you down. Trying to find out if that's really the case or why BB would even care where the load came from. I have three more 500$ VCG's that I intended on loading to BB tonight. If it's an known issue, I was just going to go buy more MO's using the VGC instead. THAT'S when I realized that I didn't endorse, or even make the MO out to myself, when I deposited it to my checking today. The teller didn't hand it back and ask to me to fill it out/endorse it either. Can you tell I'm new? LOL

WhateverDude

You don't have to go to WM when you use VRs, so they are so much more convenient to load to BB.

nickelfish

$7,500,000???!?!?!??!

Ahhh...apparently, I have a very fancy card with a very high spend requirement! Meant 7.5k

cashback

[QUOTE=nickelfish;22266883]You need to spend some more time reading. Yes, we can tell you are new and are very confused. I think you bit off a bit more than you can chew. Stick with just BB till you get the hang of it.

nickelfish

Which brings me to my next question...why can't you load the VR's at home instead of going to WM? I looked at the back and it didn't seem like you had to go anywhere to load them onto BB. Seemed like you can do it from home/phone like a VGC.


Edit:
****Nevermind...I just saw Whateverdude's comment up above. I didn't see it when I asked this****

cashback

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/manuf...tart-here.html

Wingsoffire

I may be wrong but it sounds like you are loading your GCs with a pin to BB online. I think that will shut your BB account. When you want to load your BB with GC, you should go to WM for swipe reload. VRs can be loaded from home and if you ask me, that's a much better option. That's what I know but you should read other posts to make sure.

nickelfish

"it sounds like you are loading your GCs with a pin to BB online. I think that will shut your BB account."

That's exactly what I did.

I wondered if anyone else was doing it that way instead of VR's since it was simple enough. After some searching, I found the 2012 thread saying people were getting shut down for doing that. I didn't understand why BB would care if it came from a VGC or why they'd shut down your acct for doing it.

mabramovich

I'm going to chime in with a question here if you'll forgive me...

How do the margins for VGC -> MO make sense? A VGC is the same $3.95 as a VR, right (or even $4.95?). Then you pay your $0.70 for a money order at Wal-mart. Now it's even worse for me because I don't really have any Wal-marts nearby (in Boston), so I suppose my second best option would be $1.20 MOs at the post office. Now we're paying $4.65 in the best case or $6.15 in the worst case to cash out $500.

Does this only really make sense with a category bonused card? I suppose if one can find $500 VGCs at Staples or $500 VGCs at grocery stores with an Amex PRG, then the returns aren't terrible. But with a regular 1 mile/dollar card, it's really only $3.95 VRs + BB that end up with reasonable margins, right? And even then, with the United deval and so on and so forth, those margins aren't all that good any more, right? What I am missing?

WhateverDude

The value that points in certain programs can be redeemed at.

maksimfa

Not everyone uses MS just to get points miles in true 1 or 2 points per dollar benefit. Think all those sign up bonuses that you need to spend. =)

Then, a simple 2% cash back card x $5k at a drug store.... is $60.50 a trip.
If you have a grocery store with 5% category, you are easily at $200 or so net of fees per $5k trip.

You are right, a 1% cash back for $500 card does not make much sense by itself, once you factor in time, gas, etc.

Or... combine cash back with miles, and now you have essentially free miles, as long as you split payments, earn enough on cash back to cover the price of the miles.

rufflesinc

WM MO max is $1000 so you're liquidating two $500 VGCs (+/- a few pennies).


It's very slow if you don't use category bonus. I use ink 5x and chase UR portal 2x at staples.com , plus 1% visa small business cash back, to buy $100 VGC with $6.95 fee. That comes out to just under 0.8 cents per point. You can clear 350k points each card a year and that's just maxing BB load, not getting MO.

I have posted about a way to get free miles using meijer.com and bestbuy.