The week after I got back from Thailand I stopped at my usual Walmart to unload another stash of visa gift cards (VGCs) bought online from Staples.com like I have been doing twice/three times a month. But this time something was different.
As I approached the Money Center counter, the usual ladies I’ve seen for about a year had a funny look on their faces. When I asked to load my GoBank card – she asked if I was using debit gift cards as they were no longer accepting them. I lied and said no I was using regular debit cards (which I carry with me also). So she proceeded to punch in some numbers on the register, had my swipe my GoBank card, then ask me how much I wanted to load. I asked to load my usual $900 split into three swipes ($300 each) which I’ve done for the past year at this Walmart.
The first visa debit card swipe went fine, I punched in the PIN number. Same thing with the second visa debit card. Then after I swiped the third debit card to complete the $900 transaction, a small slip of paper spit (below) out of the register. Even though the paper says ‘exceed card load limit’, I know that is not true because I had not reloaded the card in over 3 weeks since I was in Thailand (and GoBank allows $3000/month in reloads). I also had a small balance and the slip of paper said $0.00.
I hung my head and left the store thinking the registers have now been hardcoded to not accept VGCs.
I had about $7500 in gift cards to liquidate so a few days later I was in Baltimore for an event and decided to try to load my GoBank cards again at a different Walmart. This time I went to a standard register and the cashier said they implemented a new rule about 2 weeks ago and that I had to go to the Money Center to load cards. I asked him what the issue was and he said ‘something of gift cards’. So I headed to the Money Center to try it out since I was already there. To my surprise I was able to load both of my GoBank cards with $500 from a single swipe VGC. So maybe unloading visa debit cards at Walmart was not dead?
A few days I headed to another Walmart close to my house since I still had $6500 worth of VGCs. I headed to the Money Center and asked to load $300 on my first GoBank card. I used a $300 VGC with a single swipe with no problems – hooray! I then thought I’d asked to load $600 on my second GoBank card but with using two VGCs of $300 each instead of one. As soon as I finished swiping the second Visa GC, the same small piece of paper above spit out of the register. So now I’m thinking that maybe the registers are not hardcoded to not accept VGCs but rather programmed to not accept multiple swipes of payment.
So at least in my area (Maryland) liquidating Visa GCs at Walmart may not be entirely dead, but no longer worth it if the register will only allow a single swipe. I’ve been keeping an eye on this Flyertalk thread – there are more and more reports of shutdowns.
What is your experience? Have you seen any changes at Walmart?
One final warning – I think the end if very near. Don’t get stuck with thousands of dollars of Visa debit GCs.
Looking Back
It certainly was an easy way to earn many miles and points quickly. Looking back on the spreadsheet I kept, here are a few interesting tidbits:
- My first gift card purchased was on March 2, 2014. It was for $1000 worth of Visa gift cards at an OfficeMax when there was a $15 credit for buying $250 in gift cards promotion – I earned 4948 Chase Ultimate Reward points and actually made $10.
- The majority of gift cards I bought at Staples.com in order to earn 5X ultimate rewards with the Chase Business Plus Ink card – I maxed out two of these cards with their $50,000/year limit multiple times to earn 500,000 points per year.
- I loved when the TD Bank card came out in 2014. As a sign up bonus, this card would give you 5% cash back at a category of your choice for the first 6 months. I obviously went crazy buying $500 visa gift cards at supermarkets – the free gas reward points more than offset the gift card fees plus I was earning 5%. So for every 3 VGCs ($1500 total), I was earning $103 in cash.
- I also offset some of the fees with sign up bonuses from bank accounts – over $2800 in 2017 alone
- My main ways to liquidate were with BlueBird and Serve early on – remember them?!?! Then I had to switch over to GoBank which is still going strong and Money Orders the past year.
My final numbers are $509,000 worth of gift cards bought. These cards earned me 2,135,585 miles and points at a cost of just $2,353 or $0.0011.
To put that in perspective, I just spent 80,000 points on a first class flight from Thailand to Washington that retails for over $8,000. Those 80,000 points only cost me $88. How amazing is that!
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Hi,I just found your blog through a link to this post on Frequent Miler. I’m in Maryland too, and my Walmart stopped accepting prepaid debit cards for money order purchases in early July. If you want to discuss specific locations, feel free to reach out to me via email.
Thanks – just shot you a message!
My good god. Spending that much time schlepping to Walmart, waiting in line, etc…all for a measly 2.1 million points? You gotta get a life.
It actually was pretty easy – just a quick detour on my way to work, would stop right when they open so there was hardly ever a line. And it was only twice a month, maybe 3 times.
Thanks for your kind comment, I love my life.
There are still plenty of locations of WM that work with no problem and no questions asked. They are in the middle of nowhere but when you wrap MS into a vacation its a win win.
Good point, but I fear it is all coming to an end soon (like Bluebird, Amazon Payments, etc)
If it weren’t for abuses like this, we could ALL play modestly at this game forever, but people like you just can’t resist being greedy.
Thanks a lot.
LOL – you say greedy, Cibo said it was a waste of time for being so small – obviously opinions differ.
I don’t consider my amounts much at all – remember it was over a 4 year period. I’ve read others that MS $100,000+ per MONTH – check out pointchaser.com
Knucklehead.
The GoBank card’s rules seem to have changed recently. You must load no more than $500 per transaction. You can still do 2 transactions back-to-back. While this is an extra swipe for a $1000 load, it IS possible. And sure, the CSR counts it as 2 loads, but those are the new rules.
I wasn’t aware of that, thanks for sharing. That makes sense – a $300 and $500 load went through, but a $600 (two $300s) and $900 (three $300s) didn’t.
I recently did OD/OM promo and stuck with all 200 VGCs over 4k. My WMs are all adamant even thought their system allows I guess.
Let’s play Peter Baelish for a sec. If the worst case is WM along with other supermarkets stop MOs using VGCs in future, then what’s left? Yes, you can use regular spend, pay cable bills etc. but it won’t be the same volume. Split pay has become a big no no.
If you can float the money a bit, I’ve been using Kiva to make loans that get repaid back over time. They process the visa debit gift cards with no fee. But it will take 7-10 months to get all of your money back with partial payments each month.
I found out a few months ago at my local Wal-mart that they weren’t supposed to let you cash out more than 1 VGC at a time to buy a money order- which is what I do. I normally only did one $500 VGC with pin at a time but I happened to have 2 and the associate at the money center said that it was considered money laundering to do more than one at a time. So I am sticking to 1 a week which is enough for me along with putting almost all my spending to credit cards to meet my travel needs. So far the only problem I had was when one of my VGC cards got hacked and I had to call the company backing the card and go through the process of getting a refund. That was fun, not!
LOL – it’s not considered money laundering.
You got caught and instead of sticking to them, they stuck it to you. Suck it up buttercup, sometime bug sometime windshield.
LOL @ buttercup!
Thanks for the informative post TJ!
A couple questions:
1) How much can one load onto Gobank per day? From reading I understand one can load Gobank with 2 x VGCs on consectutive swipes up to $1k? Each swipe is limited to $500?
2) What direct deposits qualify for waving the monthly fee on the Gobank account?
3) What advantages does Gobank have over MOs for liquidating VGCs?
1.) According to their website you can load $2500 per day up to $3000 per 30 day period: https://www.gobank.com/fees. I’ve personally loaded up to $1000 a day and most often $900 (3 swipes of $300 cards) – but this was all before July 1, 2018.
As Knick599 points out – it seems like GoBank may have recently changed to a $500 limit but I don’t see that on their website. $500 makes sense – since July 1st – I was able to load $500 with one swipe and also $300 with one swipe with no problem.
The two times I tried to do multiple swipes (once I tried my usual 3 swipes of $300 for $900 total and a second time I tried to load $600 with two $300 swipes) – they both got rejected and the little piece of paper shown above spit out of the register saying ‘exceed load limit’.
2.) I personally do a direct deposit with a portion of my regular job’s paycheck so $500 gets deposited each month to avoid the fee. So sorry I don’t know if you could use Paypal or something else to try to have it count as a direct deposit.
3.) I think the advantage of GoBank over MOs are: no fee to load GoBank at WM vs money order fee. GoBank has an app and the website is pretty easy to do bill pays to credit cards, etc to use up the funds. I’ve heard stories of banks shutting you down for depositing too many MOs , so having GoBank helps spread everything out and saves you a step by having to deposit the MOs in a bank.
Thanks for the reply.
1) So 2 x $200 VGCs consecutive swipes should load into GoBank at WM?
2) So far I have not had any issues with 2 banks where I deposit MOs. How likely is a shutdown? Do you have any links to read more on this issue? My guess is that it depends mostly on upper bank management policy.
1. Yes that should work fine
2. Depends on what banks you use and how much you deposit each month. You should be fine with under $10k per month at each. And don’t deposit in a checking account you use as your main everyday account.
Why not deposit in a main everyday checking account? Potential shut down and the hassle of finding a new main checking account?
How do you keep track of the gift cards you bought? Do you take pics of gift cards in case of stolen/lost? Have you had lost/stolen gift card issues? I ask because recently my home was burglarized and they stole all my gift cards. Unfortunately my receipts were with the gift cards and I do not have gift card numbers. They are just all lost.
I just used a google spreadsheet for quantity bought and when I liquidated them (never listed each and every card/number). I did not take pics – but the majority of them were purchased from Staples.com – so I had the order # and the cards could be traced. I never lost or had any stolen. When I was MSing, I would liquidate them pretty quickly so they weren’t sitting in my house. I would keep them hidden in my car.
That stinks – how much did you lose?