Zgirl

Mamibear

Without knowing the CC you used to buy your GC for your "first MO experience", I can't say whether you lost money or not. There are some CCs that require a small amount, let's say $500 or $1000 spend to trigger the cash bonus; if this is the case, you need to 'spend' whatever amount to complete the required spend to trigger the bonus. GCdotcom does not offer free s/h for any amount of cards so you must've paid $240+6.95GC fee +$7.20 s/h for total $254.15 + .88 to drain it to MGMO. If your intent was to try and get the experience on buying a GC online and how to drain it at WM, I think you did great on your first venture. It's better to start with small amounts and gain confidence rather than buy huge amounts w/o an idea on how to turn those GCs back to cash so they can pay their CC later. Those who can't turn GCs back to cash after buying a huge amount find themselves in debt later; so your situation may not be the best for starter but definitely not the worse.

Zgirl

Explorer789

For small amounts like $240, it's just not worth going the GC/MO route. OP might as well just use paypal or plastiq to send the piano teacher money. The fees would be less or about the same, and far more convenient.

At bare minimum, at least buy a full $500 GC to make it worth your time.

Mamibear

To avoid confusion, it should be WM GreenDot VGC since they're the ones with $4.94 fee while WM GC don't have purchase fee and CANNOT be used to pay for MO. You're correct, he would've paid less for his GC but then, it's a different experience buying GCs online. If he bought from Simon website, he would've paid only $240+3.95fee+.49 shipping which would've been better than buying at WM.

OP, your other choices online will be GiftcardMall (GCM) which gives portal bonus, no s/h fee for up to $1998 GC with $5.95 fee per GC. Buying from Simon gives no portal bonus but GC fees are cheaper and cheaper s/h and quick shipping, too. Just keep on reading and you'll learn a lot.

zeppoloveskafka

There is no debate. OP did not manufacture any spend. OP could have paid a bill for $0, but created a Rube Goldberg mechanism to manufacture deficit.

Travelz

Here is a link to all the MS threads: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/manu...-spending-719/

Read thru the ones that interest you and read the WIKIs at the top for common answers and warnings.

radonc1

Sure, he could have paid for it with a check. It would have cost him ?nothing?
But he would have missed out of the following: (and which have their own costs)
-minimum spend on a credit card for an award
-points awarded for cc spend
-minimum spend to reach a certain level in a program
-cash back

I believe that MS is more than just generating credits by buying MOs with a credit card, depositing them and paying off the CC bill (in its latest version, now that other pathways are defunct). I think that one can achieve the above bullet points and pay bills that are check only.by using MS (in a slightly altered fashion).
Thus, my definition may not be exactly yours. So be it.

The OP may have been inefficient in his methods but he is new to the game. He will learn, hopefully.
-

cruisr

zeppoloveskafka

radonc1- OP did not manufacture any spend. What OP did had nothing to do with the bill for the piano and they could have done the same thing (far more efficiently) if they had just written a check for the piano payments, and done the other stuff economically. Buy card. Buy money order. Deposit in bank. No assembly or pianos required.

radonc1

You have described the classic MS, with the last step left off which is pay the credit card off (with bill pay using GC or with checking account using deposited MOs).

But there is no reason not to pay off other bills that don't accept CC payments using that checking account.(such as my insurance bill that only takes checks for payment). And there is no reason not to pay bills that accept MOs (my RE taxes can be and are paid with MOs).

So correct me if I am wrong or misunderstanding something. He bought a GC with a CC. He converted the GC into a MO. He paid the bill with the MO. He was not efficient in his payment transfers yielding a poor economic outcome, but I think it still falls under the purview of MS.

Anyway, I believe that I have plowed this field thoroughly and will now leave it fallow. Apologies for my ignorance.

zeppoloveskafka

I set out to help an old lady cross the street. Unfortunately, during my attempt, I accidentally push her into an oncoming vehicle. Would you say that my efforts fall on the purview of heroism? When an activity is deemed a success by wasting a lot of time to lose money, that's not manufactured spending.

AlohaDaveKennedy

What would you call that then - United States Government?

an mec

I've always felt that manufactured spending was meant to imply "buying cash substitutes and converting them back to cash to trigger reward payments when there was no underlying real payment being made." You could make or loose money and it would still be manufactured spending.

I know that manufactured spending is also used to refer to purchasing cash substitutes to pay bills that can't be paid with rewards earning credit cards, but that seems to me to be real spending. I think it's safe to say that people use the term to mean either.

eccentricfusion

I don't know which card that was used to buy the $240 gift card, but it seems like the time and cost involved to avoid to write a check negated any of the points earned, especially if there were activation costs for the VGC, cost for the money order, time lost going to get a MO, cost of any fuel used to transport to those places. I can't see how this process saved any time or money - from a glance it looks like there was a net loss here. I understand using something like Plastiq to earn points on purchases that would normally not earn them - but it takes a few seconds online and if you get enough value from the points earned, will offset the fees. In this case, I don't possibly see how there could be a net gain.