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Last week I blogged about the shutdown of using Vanilla One cards to load your Bluebird cards at Walmart. This resulted in a TON of panicked emails. Some of them were something like this:
- I have thousands in AMEX gift cards what do I do?
- I have tons of Vanilla One gift cards what do I do?
- Will Walmart shut down all loading from VDGCs next?
First off, as recently as this Sunday, I have confirmation from a reader that a US Bank VDGCs from Kroger worked just fine loading in. I have no more room to load anything to my or Lisa’s Bluebird so I can test nothing for a while but readers are a great source for data.
So what if you are holding a bunch of AMEX gift cards? Look for MetaBank or other ones but if you are worried test small i.e. say with just one $500 card.
If you are “stuck” with a bunch of VO VDGCs what can you do? First off, these are not worthless; you just spend them. Just pay bills like a normal credit card etc. If you feel you MUST unload them readers are telling me you can buy US Bank VDGCs at Kroger with the VO gift cards but again not the best choice.
Then on to the last one, what if Walmart shuts this down. Do know officially they don’t allow gift cards but we know they work. They could do as many of the Vanilla reload sales places do and just impose the rules and send out a memo and then it would be mostly game over (other than the Money Center Machines one would think). So,making sure you never hold more AMEX gift cards or VDGCs than you can live with spending in other ways is key. I tend to be conservative this way as I never take on more than I can be stuck with.
Always expect things to get harder but as they do, we will do what we can to always find another way! – René
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I anxiously await being able to test this out as well. I loaded up my BB right at the start of the month, so I’m on hold for another week.
However I have a brother in Georgia, and will ask him to stop for gas and pick me up some VR at certain gas stations, until that closes down too. Want very much to finish out my 2nd bump of Delta Reserve bonus. Perhaps I can make it Platinum this year and go out with a bang, do some award travel under Skymiles 2015.
Which gas stations are people still finding VR for purchase with credit cards?
@Skilled – search is your friend 😉 http://deltapoints.boardingarea.com/?s=vanilla
Rene – What do you mean you have nothing to test? You could have purchased a MO or made a bill payment to test a different $500 GC.
@Billy – a MO would not test loading to BB it would only test if WM still takes GCs. Plus, I do not play the MO game. Nothing against it, just fine with BB spend for my needs.
Just tried my first $500 US Bank VDGC from Kroger. Successfully loaded at WMMC atm. Curiou what the single CC purchase limit for VDGCs at Kroger will be, would be nice if $5k like CVS used to be. Wishful thinking I realize!
Update – bought $2k (4 x $500) of USBank VDGCs this morning at Kroger in single transaction. Clerk was not sure of limit, tried to call Manager to find out, then just went ahead and ran it with no issues.
@Howard – my HUGE thanks for feedback and input.
Yup, Visa Debit GC’s are all over Kroger this am. Clerk said he knew of no limits on $$ amounts.
Loaded 1k each of metabank visa and usbank MasterCards at Walmart today on the machine. No issues at all.