Cycling a CL is no big deal. 3-4x is no sweat. 10x a month takes discipline.

Nice run. $240K on a $30K CL is disciplined MSing. Sadly, not enough cash out locations to do that anymore near me. What got you was the AU spend methinks, not the cyclng. Your profile looked like a bust out fraud...

Again, you do not have to fight me. Read the DPs about all the shut-downs.

Sigh. You.can keep yapping on about this but doesn't change reality. There are thousands who MS - only a handful report shutdowns - and there's almost always a reason besides cycling that causes it (usually having to do with payments - multiple online debits, anonymous moneygram billpays, paying directly with MOs, bounced check etc etc). Most banks dont care about cycling so long as the payments can be traced for AML/KYC regulations.

As I said, if you strongly believe so, you can keep doing it. No one prevents you from doing it until something happens.

If my CapOne gets shut down, I'll hold you personally responsible : )

Some people just play fire and hope won't be caught. Some people have to since they do like $300,000 to $500,000 MS per month and they can't get that much total CL. All the huge volume MS activities can easily catch someone's eye, particularly something happens like a fraud alert or returned payment etc. Then it triggers the manual review and the entire shut-down.

This is not getting shut down outright, but managing the risk of getting shut down.

one data point - my Alliant credit union card never cycle CL, monthly Simon mall 24k VGC out of 25k CL, it hasn't been shut down and has passed first year anniversary. Several guys I know had cycled CL on this card, got shut down the first half year.

It all depends on the card product and bank. There are certain banks that don't flag cycling that I cycle many times every month. On the other hand, there are banks that do flag cycling and will shut you down after a few months of just 3x cycling. The same applies for anything. There are banks that will accept unlimited MO deposits, and there are banks that will shut you down for just about nothing.

Would cycling CL increases risk of getting shut down?

yes

I never got shut down, but my mall quit paying out rewards. They blocked that like AMEX did. Strug-guh-ling.

Which card were you using that stopped earning rewards at Simon like Amex?

I heard Alliant visa is doing this.

Not true in my experience. Consistently receiving rewards at Simon for both P1 & P2 since the first week of their 3% card launch. Heavy hitters just want people to think this stuff so people stay away in hopes it will keep it alive longer. It's the same as the people trying to claim certain gebits don't work for paying CitiBank over the phone when they still do. When in doubt, test it yourself so you'll know the truth.

Things Have Changed Recently.

Somethings have changed. Not ALL things. Yes, Alliant is still giving rewards at SIMON for VGC purchases. Yes, there are still pre-paid debit gift cards that work to pay Citibank. Maybe your argument is that someone is not getting rewards from Alliant for purchases, but that would be a case by case basis it seems, not a complete representation of everyone with an Alliant CC. Just like some prepaids don't work for paying CitiBank and some STILL do. I'm not making false statements. These are facts that are recent as of this week.

I've done my reading here and am trying to evaluate the incidence of shutdown on credit cards using BillPay vs. bank account closure with MO. It seems to me that with similar percentages, it sure is a lot easier to use the BP method. Vast majority of closures I am seeing are related to bank accounts and volume, or irregularity there of, deposits via MO. My current strategy:
1- WMBP various phone numbers with multiple billers under each phone number
2- multiple checking accounts with low volume, couple thousand, MO monthly
3- cycle the use of credit cards buying VGC from giftcardmall
4- never cycle or exceed my CL.
5-Pay a few money orders to each credit card directly at the branch

I'm hoping this works out for me over the long term

What's missing in your observation is the total number of people engaged in each activity. If you look in archived shutdown threads from several years ago, you'll see that the vast majority of shutdowns correlated with WMBP use. That message was clearly received, and the number of WMBP users is likely miniscule by now. Thus it would be incorrect to infer comparable risk between MO deposits and WMBP use in 2019.

then what is the most "proven" and "safe" way to pay off the CC's? With the ongoing Simon promo deal, I drastically increased deposits (often >10k) into bank accounts (some relatively new, some old) and I'm anticipating looming shutdowns based on various feedback here. Nothing yet, but wondering what the heavy hitters do then since it looks like no matter what you do in high volumes, it leads to a shutdown.

I know Walmart BP is risky, but what about BP from Serve, GoBank etc.? Are these BP's also around the same level of risk from the bank's POV?

I'm not very familiar with GoBank. AFAIK Serve is similar to a bank account, where the origin of all funds is 100% traceable. I understand that WMBP arrive to payees as anonymous, which creates their perception as risky.

But Serve suffers from the same issue as any other method: as soon as you increase volume, you get shut down. Mine didn't last even two months. Perhaps if you take your time and "break it in" for a few years, that might work, but who has that kind of time when there are opportunities knocking on your door without stop : )

Useless reply. The guy asks for specifics and you offer hackneyed trite reply.

You always have to remember why Serve and BB exist. They are meant to provide banking services for people who either don't trust banks or cannot qualify for banking services in the first place. Usually, for the latter, it means that they don't have enough resources to interest a bank into allowing them to open a checking account or even a savings account.

So that means that if they open a BB or Serve account, they may be depositing their $1400 paycheck (net) every 2 weeks and paying things like utility and rent from it. At the end of the pay period, there usually isn't anything left.

Now we get Mr. MSer into the picture. First of all, he isn't direct depositing a paycheck into the system. He is inputting MOs or GCs, and lots of them. Then, he is pulling the money out within days, paying off credit cards that the usual user of these services never have. The flow is huge and unprofitable for Amex, since they have to keep track of the ins and outs to satisfy the Feds for MLing. Of course they are going to close out these customers for such behavior.

Furthermore, even if your payments and deposits were legit, why would anyone use a service like BB or Serve when they could afford a bank given the amount of money they are passing through the system.

I suspect that Amex and others are becoming much more sophisticated in discovering those who overuse their products and making more rapid closures of the offenders. (just my opinion.)

So, yes, there are people with 5 or 10 accounts and using other people's SS# to sign up (which I do not believe is exactly kosher, but whatever), but they will all be closed eventually and will not be able to sign up again due to banned SS#'s. So I can see how people are using the services to the max right now.

Good points. A question does not require anyone to publish a tutorial on the subject. We all contribute what we feel is appropriate and useful to get their own research started.

Thanks. Right, Serve is not designed for MSing, and I was responding to a suggestion to use it as a payment method. So looks like heavy hitters who use it either have some unpublished tricks up their sleeve or simply found right amounts of volume to spread out between multiple accounts that they manage to keep. The main question though, looks like from many of us, was how is it possible to be hitting 200k a month (as some report) when every method of payment in high volume is said to lead to a shutdown. Answering as "YMMV, experiment, research, trial & error, etc....." is perfectly fine, just wondering if there's a method that stands out more than others all things being equal. And yes, understood, there are multiple variables at play depending on individual cases, but in general, It sounds like paying with standard bank accounts is the way to go. With the Simon deal I cranked up my deposits into dozens of K per week and bracing myself for shutdowns like Puerto Rico for Dorian. I doubt all will happen at the same time if at all, but at least will give me a better idea of a red line in my settings.

What is the benefit of paying more and carry negative balance? I'm new to this.

There's no real benefit except that sometimes you can overpay your cards with Walmart bill pays when trying to get rid of your gebits.

the problem with overpayment is that it looks like "bust out" fraud behavior, especially when accompanied by credit cycling and multiple payment sources, etc, therefore raising a red flag for the bank.

The question was about benefits of overpayment, so not exactly the requested subject. ;)

They said they were new to this, so just giving them fair warning...

1. brcl@y
2. 2 and 1/2 years, $11,000, Arr.+
3. N/A
4. Avg. $25K/month entire time
5. Yes
6. No BP ever

Shut down a few days ago -- definitely knew this could happen -- lucky I only had $140 in rewards lost and was still able to redeem after closure at 50% of value for statement credit (now posted).

Anyone know if they issue a pro-rated AF refund?

I'm just curious about the following variable, and if it ever plays a role.
Did you leave any balances before the end of billing cycles, or paid them off completely, or had no fixed pattern?
Just to be clear, I'm not asking if you paid your statement balances in full -- but rather if you had statement balances at all.