MM,

You're actually paying $2 for 502 miles. :)

hehehehe
true indeed, and yet, if ya really think about it, it's not even that:

I tend to do some tiny transaction(s) with my wachovia GC every time I load and prepare to unload it. This way, as far as they are concerned, i am actually using the card for some real intentional normal person transactions. Example: Slice of pizza, quart of oil, pack of gum and some candy at the local pharmacy, etc. That means like 8 or 9 times out of 10, I may have, say, $492 to unload instead of the full 500. Without doing the math, I think I'm thusly paying a bit more per 1,000 miles but whatever. That is what I truly believe keeps my account--and this program--alive.

;)MM

How do you unload the $492?

Isn't Wachovia charging $1.5 for each ATM withdrawl (each withdrawl limited to $100)?

I tried using Wachovia card as debt, and it doesn't work.

How could you unload the $492 without fee?

If I were a betting man, I would say that he gets $480 or $490 from an ATM machine and empties out the rest of the card at a gas station. Of course for this to work, he would need to pay inside since the "hold" on the credit card from paying at the pump would otherwise cause problems.

Earlier in this very long and old thread, I have described my methods but here goes once again:

1) You used to be able to treat this card as a credit card in terms of the ability to walk into any bank and ask for a cash advance. Now, with a credit card, they'd charge a fee (the credit card would) and that's kinda why people don’t do “CA’s” unless in dire emergencies. But THIS is, for all intents and purposes, still a credit (and debit) card as far as most financial institutions should be concerned.

Now the thing has the words BUXX and DEBIT across the top right corner over the hologram and visa logo, but here's what I did to solve that one:

Stick something that looks official over it. For example, if you had a sticker of a US flag, that would look like it was supposed to be there and no one these days is going to take it off or wonder much as to why it's there. That way, the bank wont question the card's ability to be a credit card that allows cash advances and they also wont readily know its a gift card. A sticker could be something you make or get from one of those gift stores at the mall. I dunno. Be creative. The reason is because you do not want the banks to think of your intent to do a “credit card cash advance transaction” as anything BUT just that!

Gift cards and debit cards are less likely to be allowable at banks for one's ability to do a cash advance. As well, cash advances, in my experiences, are one of the last vestiges of the old school transaction types I can think of. You walk in, stand in line, hand them your ID and card, ask for a cash advance, wait for someone to run the card (they even sometimes use the old carbon copy machines) and then sign some paper(s) and wait for them to hand you cold hard cash. This process could take a while and if you do it a lot they may wonder why, and then again they may just come to like/accept your presence at their bank every week or so. As far as I am aware, there is no reason why the above should not work still.

2) I have not told anyone i know in real life but in here I have mentioned that I have found a way in my company to run my Wachovia card through the office, give them the money but take out cash. It's not something I should get in trouble for but I sure aint gonna say nuthin... I doubt my company’s HR or accounting departments would approve of it, nor might Wachovia or any other banking and corporate entity I can think of. All I know is they get their money in full and right away (it comes off my visa Buxx) and I get cash. Nuf said. If you can get that working on your own in your world, go for it. Good luck and don’t get caught. It probably would work for many of you but hey, you didn’t hear it from me and that's all I am going to say about how I currently do it.

There may have been or may be other ways to perform the removal of funds, but I am certain you need to be careful in all methods in order for this thing to continue for the good of all of us. Mine really does not affect Wachovia in any negative way, but then again, I bet they don’t condone this sort of thing. Hey, I could be making this up too, so there's no proof I do it that way anyway now is there? Tee hee hee

;)MM

I hope that helped some. Surely you can see why I had do slant my post in the way I did.

"Improvements" to the NWA Visa Card????
 

I just got an email from US Bank "re-introducing"their NWA Visa. It is full of the usual corporate junk, but I decided to glance at "terms and conditions", where they specifically state they will not "request miles from NWA for Visabuxx". :mad:

Now, I have been using my card since April and have run up a fair number of miles. Does anyone know if this has always been in the T&C or this is something new? :confused:

I am NOT going to call customer service about this, in order not to rock the boat. Would be a pity to switch the loads back to BoA and Chase, since the load fee is waived on this card.

Info much appreciated.

Hmmm, Marathon Man will be affected by this change too.

I have been using non-US Bank cards to load since I'm not interested in accumulating NW miles...

us bank card can be used to give you miles anywhere but it is or has been feeless if you use a NWA visa to fund it. I cannot though because US bank visa buxx ousted me long long ago. Of course I should try again. LOL

wow 2007 is getting off with a horrific bang, eh? :mad:

A certain bank's ability to accept cash advances (CA) over the phone or online for no fee worked wonders with many a gift card for many a person for many a year on FT...

It just don't work no more.

First, they changed the limits of online use for this feature and it never really worked consistently for me, and while I could have lived with that, now they pull this... :(:(:(:(:(

They recently--and without notice--started to code the transaction differently and this generates a fee on the other end. When doing the CA from a GC like one of my Wachovia VBx cards, I used to check my gift card's balance to make sure everything worked and it would come through as a purchase. As many in here know, the reason why people loaded gift cards to begin with is because they had no real way of charging fees normally found on your statement if you do a cash advance, but because they had a Visa/MC logo on them and they had 16 digits and a security code, etc, they were, for all intents and purposes, a valid credit card. So, the gig was that many bank systems coded it a certain way, no cash advance transaction-related fee was ever generated. Seems some gift cards can now SEE that the other bank did a CA and so they whack ya accordingly cuz it's a teller charge or teller transaction. Wachovia's VisaBuxx card CS told me this was so, and that the way the transaction is coding is NOT coming from them, but from the other source.

You can look at these transactions below from one of my now nearly useless Wachovia VB gift cards and see for yourself how my bank in question words it now. The fee now comes in immediately after you do a CA. Still worth it? Sure, maybe you just do fewer unloads after multiple loads, but I dunno. For me, it just makes the miles cost more in the end. :( Wachovia merely charges a fee for doing teller transactions like cash advances, just like it pretty much always has. The fact is, the place ya pour your money into now codes it as such, so it triggers the Wachovia fee and that just plain blows!

12/27/2006 1473XXX Manual Cash Fee -$2.50 (generated from transaction below)

12/27/2006 1473XXX BANK CASH ADVANCE 800-832-3724 TX US Terminal VBASE2 FI - Banks,Savings,CRU -$988.40 (this, and the above fee are what happens now. Both transactions--the CA and the fee above-- happen together now, so when you unload you need to factor in said fee before dumping all your funds or you get hit with a $20 service charge at Wachovia too! OUCH!)

11/14/2006 1370XXX BANK DEPOSIT 800-832-3724 TX US Terminal VBASE2 Purchase of Goods and service -$982.11 $0.00 -$982.11 (this is when it used to work really nicely!)

(my non rounded amounts were ways to keep below the radar and I would usually do a charge or two of a more normal nature to keep the card in regular use as per its terms and conditions)

THE REASON I mention all of this now is cuz it will save many of YOU the fees I just got hit with! So don't shoot me, ok?

My bank told me during a long call that they just slid that change in there without notice because all this time as a courtessy, they had been allowing the CAs to come thru as a purchase and they decided it was time to stop all that. So ya can't complain about a courtessy no longer offered, they kinda said. They DID announce the change would take place for customers holding one of THEIR credit cards, and for those, this would happen on Jan 1, but for everyone else, it just sorta happened. That means the ability to use a gift card to pour in funds like a CA, or even go for it directly from your mileage-earning CC to do this "purchase transaction" (;)) is no longer gonna be FREE. :( And since it now codes as a cash advance, you can't really get away with much anymore. Might as well just go to a teller or get cash from the ATM, cuz cancelling a Wachovia VBx card costs you $8 to do so. :(

I was thinking about writing into the bank in question with printouts of the fees I did not catch but did receive, and seeing if they'd consider a courtessy refund for me, but hey, the good news for me is that Marathon Man cannot even count the number of nearly free miles earned by doing this. Even as some GCs started to charge fees to make the loads in the first place, it was all still so totally sick. I am certain many of you who knew of this one also earned mega mileage and you, like me, are in mourning now. Let us pray.

It just aint really worth using them for cash outs now, is it?... An era's end has cometh, and times change indeed...

Bummer that, eh?

MM

if you happen to have a GC or something that lets you have lots of money on it before you need to unload it to your bank, then maybe the new fee thing is washed out and spread out enough to not matter as much for you, but I know Wachovia cards have a limit on what they can hold til you must spend it, and that makes it cost too much. Also, if you can find a GC or other source that does not charge to load funds, then this fee is not as bad, but for me, it is. I still have my 'swipe at work" method, but they are gonna revamp that system one day and I will be done with that as well. Time to find more options!

Now you cannot unload more than $100 from Wachovia VISABUXX via above referenced financial institution. Seems that the cash advance limit of $100 a week is somehow enforced.

I used up funds and cancelled both cards. No more GCs for this MM for now. :(
Anyone?

I tried $100 online on Wach on the said bank. No dice.

USB still ticking for me. No whammies, ok?

duplicate post

I just loaded up money on my US Bank VisaBuxx card and was going to do a withdrawl in a few hours. In the past I've always been able to do 4 $500 loads per month for a total of $2,000 per month. I've then been able to do 3 $500 withdrawls on one day and another 1 $500 withdrawl a week later. I have 3 cards, so it's an easy 6K miles/month.

Anyone else experience a recent cut in the maximum USBank/Buxx withdrawal limit?

I'm still experimenting, but it looks like I've been cut to $200 per card per day.

Not a big deal as I will still be able to move $2000/month/card, but it does mean more trips to the ATM.