The perils of gift cards and money orders

UPDATE: On this current Staples fee free offer I actually suffered my first loss (that I know of). Lost a $199 money order that I’m almost positive I threw in a trash can. I threw away the receipt as well as the card in my haste to clean up the car and mess of empty packages and cards. I’ve been chatting with other MS’ers this week and find my system is not a safe one. Part of my problem is the money order outlets print with such light ink that I can’t walk to my car and mobile deposit right away to my bank. Lessons learned and hopefully this discussion will help lead me to a safer MS method

I have been pretty lucky. Only time really had a problem was the first time out with a handful of the $200 Staples NoFee Visa Cards with my Amex Serve – didn’t realize Serve only takes 500 dollars – or 2.5 cards. And I had like 15 GCs to offload on to Serve Than was going to another place to offload some others – since it was my first time, didn’t want to do too many at the WMT – I lost my Serve. So basically that first day was shot to heck. As for losing them, I try to keep track of them – on a spreadsheet and bundle them in a file with receipts, both store and money order. So far, knock on wood – working well. Granted, I do not do large inventory. I don’t want that much “cash” at risk” out there. Thats why am thankful for SimonMall – one big card, fewer swipes and MO costs.

Rick, buy a bag of rubber bands and some 1-2 gallon zip-lock bags. Wrap all gcs with MO stub and receipt, along with gc purchase receipts. Write the date on each bundle, wrap with rubber bands on a daily basis. And then store for a year. A few times a year I find I need to go back and dig thru old purchases – when you’re doing millions of MS a year, it’s inevitable something goes wrong.

Worst near-miss was days of Vanilla Reload cards – accidentally left a Reload card in the plastic bag from CVS – cards were so light, didn’t realize there was still a Reload card still in it when I put in the trash bin. Just happened to realize the card was missing – looking for it everywhere but it was trash day and I can hear the garbage truck two houses away. Rush out, tip over the garbage bin and sure enough, find the Reload card inside the plastic bag from CVS. Finished picking up the last of the garbage off the driveway as the truck pulls up. A minute later and it would have been too late.

Lesson learned – never put any gcs in plastic bags again…

Must be an age thing (I’m a boomer). I save every card, money order, check, receipt, whatever. Money orders get a name on them before I leave place of purchase. To each their own, I guess!

After years of MS’ing, I finally had a disaster. I was running 5 Staples bought Master Cards (no fee special) when the grocery store computer went down in the middle of the transaction of buying $1000 worth of money orders. When it came back up they voided the order and told me, “no worry”, in about a week you will have your money back on the cards. This was my “go to” grocery for flipping cards into money orders for years, with no questions asked. Anyhow, a week passed and no money back on cards and no action pending at giftcard mall either. I then went to the store and let them know what was happening and asked their help. The store manager told me in no uncertain terms, that what I had been doing would no longer be allowed and she did provide me with a receipt for the void action. She said there was nothing more she could do and gave me their corporate number to call. I called them and you deal with only a call center, but I did get a “case number”. A few days later I got a call from someone who was working on the case and told that in a week, by 8/8, the $600 would be returned on my 3 cards, $200 on each. On 8/8 and 8/9, still no money on the cards. I called back each day, had to reopen the case and was told that the same person who had left a message (with a blocked phone number) on my phone is working on it. The giftcard people have told me how to dispute the charges, but this takes months to resolve. I will do so if I don’t get some action next week………clearly the grocery store knows they owe me the money back but they have so far, not been able to get it back on the cards. I may end up having to eat $600 and it is driving me nuts.