graytidy

I have Amex and many of my payees don't take it. I buy US Bank Visa's at the grocery store with my Amex to get around this. Here is the problem, sometimes they just stop registering. You get a message "We are unable to process this request. Please call the phone number on the back of your card for additional assistance." At this point the card is useless for online use. You can still call in and set a PIN.

Once a card has failed in this way it is "marked" and the IP address which the transaction came from is also marked.

Any subsequent registration attempts from a marked IP address will mark all of the cards you attempt to register.

If you take a marked card and try to register it at a new IP address that IP address will become marked.

The only workaround I've found are to use different IP addresses, but I'm running out of locations and IP addresses. They don't seem to be setting any persistent cookies, but just to be safe you might open connections to their site in new incognito windows each time.

I've been avoiding getting a VPN, but registering X cards and then reconnecting to get a different IP might be the most practical solution.

Anyone else seen this?

pixelrogue

MaxVO

If you're redirecting the spend intended for your AmEx toward that Visa Gift Card, it's not "manufactured spending". It's also a bad idea, as you're now reailzing.
Is there any reason why you can't have a MC or Visa credit card in addition to your AmEx?

graytidy

No, I don't see that it is a bad idea, please explain. Are you saying that it is a bad idea to mix normal, everyday spending with manufactured spending? Why?

lumangoy

Aren't you having issues registering?

That's one reason why

Mamibear

Since you're having trouble with USB GCs and you're buying them at grocery stores, why not choose the ones issued by Metabank? Beware, though, that ALL cards bought off the racks from b&m stores carry risks of funds getting hacked so it is best to 'liquidate' these GCs within 24 to 72 hrs after purchase.

audifanatic2510

Yes, I second this. Download Opera, it has a built-in VPN. I use it at work all the time too to bypass the draconian IT peeps

audifanatic2510

The whole idea with MS (manufactured spending) is to "spend" money and then pay off your credit card with that same money. If you're buying giftcards and then using the grocery cards to, say, buy groceries, then you're no better off. The idea is to "spend money" without actually spending money. All you're doing in your case is adding an unnecessary step. Like, why not just go buy groceries with your credit card in the first place and skip the gift card? Same thing. The only time this might make sense is if you're in a pinch to hit a minimum spend and you buy a gift card for a store you shop at regularly to hit the spend. Or suppose you have a difficult time liquidating a card due to nasty store managers (my problem the first few tries). None of this is really true MS though.

As for mixing your MS with your regular money, very bad idea. As they say, "don't .... where you eat." If your bank sees "suspicious activity" in your account, they can very well freeze all of your money or worse. You'll be answering all sorts of questions and jumping though a bunch of hoops to get access to your money again. Not to mention if the IRS catches wind of it; the IRS is the most powerful organization on the planet, don't mess with them. It also just gets very messy when juggling many gift cards at once. I did this when I first started out and I learned quick that it's a bad idea. I thought that (since I use Ally as my regular bank, 1.6% interest) I'd collect the interest on my MS and then pay it off. But the aforementioned reasons aside, it was very messy commingling my personal funds with my MS funds. Especially when you're just starting out, you're probably not keeping very good track of these things; you're still on the sugar-high of cashing-out your first money order.

My advice is, at minimum, open a prepaid debit account like AMEX Serve Free Reloads. At least here in NY (and I think VT too), there's no maintenance fees (and they're relatively low regardless, but you can bypass them if you setup direct deposit and such). I put all my MS money in there. I have 2 accounts (you can have up to 5). I will load my giftcards on those at Family Dollar (I find FD much easier to sneak giftcards past than at WM) and then setup bill pay. the bill pay takes a couple days, but you can speed it up to 10 minutes if you use Prism to pay your bills. Plus, if you're trying to MS on an AMEX card, Serve will allow you to load up to $1000/month ($200 at a time) onto the Serve card from your credit card. That's $1000 in free spend (no giftcard fees). Just watch out because sometimes that may be considered a cash advance; I've yet to run into a problem though.

ChuckMango

If you call you should be able to register them ive found

CDO

Ive had that happen and if you call they will register them over the phone, a major PITA but should work.

EL3V3N

do these work at wally?

vacaloca

The MC's work at WM as the last (4th swipe) from what I've read. Haven't tried it personally.

OP, I have run into the same issue you did. The activation started failing at OD/OM for me, and today was the first time I saw them not only block one of my IPs, but also block my phone # from reaching their IVR -- it immediately hangs up on me after one ring. LOL.

Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if they can fail the activation based on the same CC being used to purchase these. I'm not sure what data sharing is going on in the store/activation backend, but I suspect it might not be anonymized.

I had called to manually activate one earlier today that never activated and sometime after that call today they had banned by # as I could not reach them when another card failed to activate .... ROFL.

Walmero

EL3V3N

Does work at wally's

ChuckMango

Ip ban kicks in once the velocity limit gets triggered.