Not everyone likes miles and points collectors abusing the American Express Bluebird product.
First of all, I want you to know my attitude towards credit cards and money in general. #1: Feel lucky when you are approved, good credit is a stroke of luck.
#2: people who care more about the rewards than the credit line must already have so much money they dont know what to do with it.
Now. You people are RUINING bluebird/serve by making amex’s security dept so paranoid that every linked credit or debit card or every vanilla reload is an attempt at getting points rather than legitimate usage, that me, a person who couldnt get a credit card if my life depended on it because george bush gave me a 399 credit score, gets limited every time I try to link a funding source for actually loading my card.
Bluebird was intended for people who cant get bank accounts to be able to have an account that in my opinion works better than the banks. You cant bounce a check because they are pre authorized What a wonderful feature! Now I know that every rent check I write will clear no matter how long my landlord waits to cash it! Dont have to worry about accidentally spending the rent money.
But you points chasers are going to end up ruining every prepaid card out there that lets you load with a credit or debit card. You already made amex change the rules so you cant link prepaid cards any more, which means i cannot link my unemployment card for when im out of work,
And when I link my legitimate bank debit card from chase, because I still use chase to deposit paper checks since I cannot afford a smartphone because george bush gave me bad credit, they limit my account until i send them statements and pictures of my debit card.
And id bet everything in the world that its because of you uppity rich snobs and your “manufactured spending” Why not just call it what it is? POINTS FRAUD! Thanks for trying to ruin prepaid for the people of america who count!
(Additional line breaks are mine)
I think Bluebird is an amazing product. It manages to avoid the low margins imposed by the Durbin amendment, and thus they can offer effectively full service online banking to the unbanked.
But it isn’t miles and points collectors that drive concerns about fraud, it’s actual fraud and it’s criminal enterprises moving money around which entails government risk.
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George Bush gave him bad credit? Whaaat?
I’m pretty sure he was being sarcastic or just trolling
@Rich:
The important lesson here is, never let George Bush be an authorized user on one of your cards. *Trust me.*
The continuous references to George Bush as basically being the root of all evil were amusing. I have no particular love for the man, but something tells me he had better things to do than call up TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax and tell them to selectively lower a particular person’s credit score.
Better that he blame Bush instead of Obama.
Wonder if George bush stole his apostrophe key, too. Or perhaps it was “Fast and Furious: Punctuation Edition.”
@Jeanne, lol.
Thanks for the laugh. I needed that.
That’s posted here as well?
He’s going to be internet famous.
As I said in that thread: if he was one of the people in america (sic) who count, he wouldn’t be accidentally spending the rent money.
Good credit is a stroke of luck? I think not. As most of us know, it’s earned by making your payments on time and very rarely, if ever, going over you credit limit.
But then again, if George Bush is an authorized user on your card, all bets are off. 😉
I think I see the problem – “good credit is a stroke of luck”.
Hands off my Bluebird.
The problem with Bluebird is it pretty much blows for doing anything other than liquidating VRs or Visa/MC GCs. Almost as if AMEX took the least talented web folks they had and relegated them to putting together the bluebird site. No way I would use Bluebird for regular banking. You can’t even pull up a billpay to see the memo you put on the billpay. Try searching for transactions outside a 3 month period. Sorry, you must narrow it down to a 3 month window. WTF?!? A stark contrast to the flagship AMEX CC site which is best in class and a joy to use.
@HikerT “The problem with Bluebird is it pretty much blows for doing anything other than liquidating VRs or Visa/MC GCs” See, for the product’s target market it is head and shoulders better than pretty much anything else. If you don’t have real access to a bank account, what’s better than Bluebird? They aren’t competing for your banking business. They are competing with check cashing stores, 7-11 money orders, and prepaid products.
Trooooooolllllll! 😀
So, Gary, you don’t think it’s points fraud to buy VR cards with credit cards, deposit into Bluebird, then pay off the credit card with Bluebird, lather, rinse, repeat? What is it, then?
YeahRight – it’s within the rules of all the programs, that’s what it is.
I’m pretty sure Obama would be more likely to exceed your credit line and not make the payment on time that Bush.
I wonder if it was H.W. Bush or W. Bush that was the culprit in doling out bad credit.
@Chad — No, that would John Boehner…
oops, left out “be”
Yeah, if you like your Bluebird you can keep your Bluebird. Period.
Yep. Bush gave you a low credit score. Bush also cancelled your health insurance. Bush also gave all the money to the rich fat-cats on wall street, and took it from people like yourself. Bush did it! Damn it!!! Bush did it! We must blame every unfair act of life on BUSH, for it is written:
…And Barry shall lay both his hands upon the head of George Bush, and confess over him all the iniquities of the people of America, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of George Bush, and shall send [him] away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness of West Texas…
And George Bush shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and Barry shall let George Bush go in the wilderness, somewhere in West Texas….
So it’s clear. BUSH did it!
Gary,
Buddy, I think you should change the name of your blog to “View from the Right Wing.”
@chad did you not know that under Obama the US has seen spending slow to the slowest in decades or do you not care?
@Haldami: Very wrong. You should stop relying on MSNBC and DailyKos for your news. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1980_2012USd_15s2li111lcn_F0t
Here’s an even better chart that includes the deficit as well: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1980_2012USd_15s2li111lcn_F0tG0t
But please, back to the topic at hand. I think we can all agree that having Bush or Obama as an authorized user on our CCs (in a sense, we did, unfortunately) would be a really bad idea, but that this doofus had neither to blame for his credit score.
If he had blamed Cheney and and tied it to weapons of mass destruction then I would have believed that AMEX was in on the scam………..W was just not smart enough to call the credit bureau…………
It may be fraud with AMEX but Visa charges me $3.95 for their money laundering service.
Gary
I did not know you even read FT anymore!
@Mike Since this is not fraud and ‘within the rules of all the programs’, I am sure you don’t mind letting Amex and Chase know that this is how you rack up all your spending on the cards, right?
That rascally George Bush, still ruining people’s lives! They can have my Bluebird when they pry it from my cold, dead hands!
Aside from the CC propaganda…I really enjoy reading your blog. What was the point of this post? To generate comments by interjecting political nonsense? If so…it worked. Maybe I’m just out of the loop. Probably my first comment here (or one of a couple). Not that you should care about my thoughts…but this is just plain confusing.
George W Bush must like me …cause I have a 789 credit score.
We (George) stick together like glue. And we will have a British King soon ! Watch out world !
@Dan – Because Obama is a saint? They’re all politicians, they’re equally evil and have a special place in hell reserved for all of them.
Best guess for why a not-complete-insane person might blame Bush for their credit score and consider such things luck would be medical-cost-induced bankruptcy, made more painful by the 2005 bankruptcy reform law. (Of course, it’s mostly luck that any of us were born in or able to immigrate to a country where reasonable consumer credit exists at all.)
That said, I think I prefer to interpret the post as a satire of the “blame the bloggers” crowd.
@Chris Lacey – what was the point of this post? Nothing other than that I was pointed to this comment, and I was amused. I laughed. I thought it was kinda awesome. So I shared it. Some people share such things on Facebook, I have a blog, nothing more complicated than that 🙂
@Jordo66 – what in the world is right wing about this post?
I got a few laughs from this post but what I really want to know. Am I missing a way to earn more points, what the heck is bluebird ? With all the recent point devaluations I need to earn more points.
@Leonard – google bluebird vanilla reload
HAHAHAHAHAHA – Not sure what’s funnier, the FT post or the comments here. Awesome.
“If he had blamed Cheney and and tied it to weapons of mass destruction”
Yeah, some of the WMDs that Saddam “didn’t have” {sic}, were the chemical weapons that were transferred from Iraq to Syria for “safekeeping”. Saddam thought he would survive the second invasion just as he survived the first one, and would get them back from his fellow Ba’th Party Dictator Assad.
Obama has confirmed that Syria, which did not have a chemical weapons program of its own, used those chemical weapons on the Syrian rebel forces. It’s just not politically expedient for him to mention where Assad got them from.
The stupidest thing that Bush ever did was to not widely disseminate the credible reports of the Russians helping Saddam ship the WMDs out to Syria while the US delayed invading trying to get support from the UN.
That said, based on the deficits they are responsible for, having Bush as an authorized user will ruin your credit. But having Obama as an authorized user will bankrupt you…..
For those that didn’t see the Press conference yesterday, Obama clarified his health care statement. What he really meant was: “If you like your health care policy, you can keep your health care policy. For one more year. Maybe…” 😉
{Nothing above has been reviewed by, and certainly does not represent the views of, GL/VFW.}
For what it’s worth my own tentative belief on weapons of mass destruction is that Saddam thought he had them, that his generals told him their program was good because the consequences to any other answer would be unthinkable for them. So he was as surprised as the rest of the world to find out their weapons program wasn’t what the US had claimed.
I don’t want to argue this point, certainly not with you, but I don’t understand how anyone can say he didn’t have chemical weapons. It’s a certain fact that he used them on the Kurd villages in Northern Iraq. And before that, he used them to stop the Iranian forces that almost overwhelmed his army in the Iraq-Iran war.
Having had chemical weapons, and I don’t think anyone disputes that, why would he get rid of them? Hide them yes, but a dictator such as Saddam, whose ultimate goal was to bring the entire Middle East under his control, would never voluntarily give up such a military advantage.
There are credible reports that the Russians, who had sold Saddam both weapons and weapon technology, moved Saddam’s WMD across the border into Syria to prevent US forces from finding them.
Just as they offered to take control of the chemical weapons in Syria a couple of months ago in an attempt to prevent US military strikes in punishment for Assad having used them. In essence, they were offering to move the same weapons once again, just making the offer public this time.
We are supposed to believe that Saddam, who most certainly used chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war, and again against the Kurds, somehow didn’t have them anymore. And yet Assad, who wasn’t previously known to have them, somehow came up with them on his own at a moment’s notice to use against the rebels, just strains credulity for me.
Sorry, I know this was totally off topic for this blog, but I’m just so tired of reading comments like #27 thrown out as “everybody knows”, and no one pointing out that there are other possibilities the MSM saw no political advantage in reporting.
@43 Your view reminds us of HL Menchen’s quote about a philosopher as being someone in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there……you, Cheney and the theologian have the distinct skills to find him………
@23, @37: I think it’s because you shone light on someone blaming Bush for everything, revealing such accusations to be moronic. I think that makes you Right Wing. As our liberal friends are so fond of saying, reality has a right wing bias. (Or something like that.)
@44: There are two things that I could never rationalize about many liberals, especially some liberal friends who I would consider to be otherwise intelligent. Most things about liberals, while I disagree, I can rationalize and sympathize as to why they would believe that. However, there are two things that I can’t even fathom, their certitude on two issues: #1 That there were no WMDs in Iraq. #2 That Kerry actually won, but the Supreme Court overruled and voted for Bush.
On #2, all counts, including a later independent press recount, showed Bush won. The only thing the Supremes put a stop to was endless and arbitrary recounts. Even if they had let the recounts go ahead, the result would have been the same.
More to the point on #1, I’m genuinely curious: Do you believe Saddam didn’t have chemical weapons? Or do you think chemical weapons don’t qualify as WMD?
The former is incomprehensible to me, but the latter is defensible. After all, I think both Afghanistan and Iraq and the dronings are all big, big mistakes. I’m hardly in the position of trying to justify the Iraq War, but I do look on with academic curiosity at people like #44; I’m very curious what those kinds of people are actually thinking, because usually I just hear it as a trite, sarcastic soundbite: “Everyone knows there were no WMDs in Iraq! Haha.” with no explanation as to the rationale for such a remark. Even here, we see that same pattern: #43 offering a careful historical basis for his belief and #44 offering a sarcastic, mocking, off-topic barb.
@Robert Hanson: All of Iraq’s chemical weapons were destroyed by the UN in the early 1990s. And Syria did in fact have a chemical weapons program, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_chemical_weapons_program .
National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction
President Bush
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America September 17, 2002
Weapons of mass destruction (WMD)—
nuclear, biological, and chemical—in the possession
of hostile states and terrorists represent one
of the greatest security challenges facing the
United States. We must pursue a comprehensive
strategy to counter this threat in all of its dimensions.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
So regardless of whether or not a single individual thinks chemical weapons are WMD, clearly President Bush did. So his claim that Saddam had WMD would obviously include them.
As for the pattern of offering sarcastic, mocking, off-topic barbs, one of which was the sole reason this discussion came up here at all, I strongly agree, except with your categorizing such people as “liberals”. They in fact usually self-describe as “progressives”.
I personally consider myself a Classic Liberal Democrat, as JFK used the term. For a discussion of what JFK meant by that, see the article: 5 Liberal Myths About JFK. Here’s a short excerpt:
“In the 1960 “I’m a liberal speech” Democrats often cite, Kennedy sounded more like a compassionate conservative:
If, by “liberal,” [our opponents] mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer’s dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrates that we are not that kind of “liberal.” But if, by a “liberal,” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people….if that is what they mean by a “liberal,” then I’m proud to say that I’m a “liberal.”
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/11/14/5-liberal-myths-about-jfk/
Hmmm. Conflicting reports on Syrian capability, most of which are from some time ago. I could be wrong about that. But frankly, I’d go with Wikipedia’s statement “Israel stated in 1989 that Syria had only the “potential for chemical warfare, but not more than that” since the Israeli air force frequently wipes out Syrian WMD sites.
Israel and I could be wrong, of course, but since it’s theoretical for unspecified “arms analysts”, and an absolute matter of life and death for Israel, I’m betting on the Israelis having it right.
Interesting though that you are sure the US, British, German and French Intelligence services were totally wrong about Saddam having WMD, but the reports of Syria having them are certainly true. As with Gary’s comment on Saddam, they could be claiming a capability they don’t have to intimidate hostile neighbors.
“All of Iraq’s chemical weapons were destroyed by the UN in the early 1990s”. And how do you know this for sure? Normally, the UN is about as effective as the ACA website.
Even if true, did they kill everyone in Iraq who knew how to make more? If they were able to produce them in the 1980s, and we know they did, how did they become incapable of doing so 15 years later? Certainly not because of sanctions, the sanctions were like a sieve.
Nevertheless, even if Syria had a robust chemical weapons program, supplied and coached by the Russians according to Wikipedia, that doesn’t rule out that the Russians could have helped Saddam reconstitute his program as well. And if so, there would be even more motivation for the Russians to move all evidence of it across the border before US troops arrived.
Back to the central question, no one really knows for sure if Iraq and/or Syria had WMDs. So the claim that it was all a lie is pure speculation. Made somewhat more unlikely since the US, UK, Germans and French all said the same thing. And the observed frantic cross border traffic just prior to the start of the war.
Which uncertainty doesn’t keep some people with no personal expertise at all from proclaiming it as absolute fact.
@Robert……..you are talking to yourself again and if you don’t stop the neighbors are going to call those guys in the little white coats and then you’ll have to go sleep with Jack Nicholson……and you know you don’t like that place where they force you to take your meds………….
Obamacare ruined Bluebird for me.