maygarish

Someone reported that a purchase on a Barclays card from Simons was coded as a CA. Did anybody have anything like this?

darenhuang

Its purchase for my Barclay AA Aviator

maygarish

When was the purchase? It was or wasn't coded as a CA?

mc0107

CS rep told me today that Simon no longer accepts CCs that have a name printed twice. I explained that my card is for a sole proprietorship and she angrily insisted that she did not want to violate a Simon rule and get fired. Then she told me unless she could independently verify that my name was actually a business, such as checking a company website, she couldn't do it. I told her that the CC company already verified the legitimacy of my business then walked away.

Chelski

My barc AA aviator was general merchandise purchase .. Not CA

GatorSmiley

I always get the free water bottle every time I buy, which is great when you have to walk far to get to the CS counter. However, over the holidays there were hershey's chocolates and hot cocoa.

There is just such a difference in the buying experience between Simon and the other stores. Walmart makes you feel like a crook for buying VGCs with a CC. At Simon, you can buy $9.5k on a CC without anyone batting an eyelash. And they give you gifts.

danhouston

nice, which SM or where is this?

devnull

IIRC, there was another report of this awhile back. The reason is supposedly to combat fraud where someone steals a card, embosses their name on it (so there are two names, the actual owner and the thief's), then passes it off as their own and claims it's a "joint account." Obviously, when the two names are the same, this shouldn't be a concern, so it's either a misapplication of policy or a poorly designed policy.

kaiotes

Are these SM Visas good for purchase of MO at post offices?

PaulMSN

Most likely a poorly understood policy on the part of the rep.

AlohaDaveKennedy

Yes at regular POs, but some contract POs may not take them.

littleconsumer

It's been a long while since I've bothered buying VGCs at 1X points, but I needed to meet min spend on 3 cards in a short amount of time, so I went to SM yesterday and today.

Yesterday I purchased $2K, and the entire transaction was what you would expect.

Today I went and there was a different employee working. She asked how many GC's I wanted, and then asked me if I wanted $500 on each (I didn't tell her the amount).

She then told me "I'm going to ask you some personal questions so bear with me. I nod. She then asks me if I'm purchasing the cards to load on Bluebird. I honestly don't really care if I couldn't purchase VGCs from this location again so I said yes. She then beats around the bush and says the following:

"I don't know how to say this, but I would recommend that you check the blogs. We had one of our regulars come in a couple of weeks ago and buy $7K worth and then went to WMT [which is 3 min away] and was unable to spend them. He came back to use claiming the cards didn't have any money loaded on them, and we called the help line and thec ards were fine. WMT was blocking his spending. He came back here and asked me 'How am I going to pay my credit card?!'. "

She then goes on to tell me how she feels bad for the customer blah blah blah.

I know we have some idiots among us but this takes the cake. This is about on par with the people that view MS as an unalienable right.

FWIW I did have to fill out the form which asked how I was using the VGC's. In hindsight I should have put "MS" but opted for "spending".

CWAL

Budgeting Tool

Chelski

My reps fill the form for me and write a reason for me.

krazykanuck

SMH...

This is, part of the many reasons, we can't have nice things.