I’m going to say a bit today about the current status of ‘Bluebird’ and ‘Vanilla Reloads’ as a mileage-earning strategy, and offer some tips for folks that are already pursuing that strategy to do it even bigger while also offering something to the folks that haven’t been able to take advantage so far because they cannot find Vanilla Reload cards in their area that can be purchased with a credit card.
Buying Money with Money
Vanilla Reload cards — the holy grail, the ability to buy money on a credit card and use the money to pay off credit cards while earning points in the process — can be difficult to find in some cities, and folks run into all sorts of different policies when trying to purchase them.
I’ve written about these cards in the past. The simplest thing, once you’ve found them, is to use them to load an American Express Bluebird card.
Everyone should have one of those cards, if they don’t already, they do require a social security number when you sign up but don’t run your credit. They’ll send you a free card in the mail.
It’s a product for the ‘unbanked’ — it’s an online bank account of sorts, combined with a debit card, you can make purchases or use online billpay or take cash out of an ATM.
It’s also the mileage junkie’s best friend because it lets you buy money (Vanilla Reload, or load fundsat Walmart with a mileage-earning debit card) and liquidate the money back into a bank account, my preferred method is billpay since you can have checks sent to anyone you wish.
Finding Vanilla Reload Cards
Office Depot no longer sells Vanilla Reload cards, that’s a shame because you could earn 5 miles per dollar using cards that bonus office supply spend.
One workaround, for folks that have access to Vanilla Reloads, has been to buy American Express gift cards at Office Depot for the 5 miles per dollar and then use the gift card to purchase Vanilla Reload cards at another store. It’s more expensive but still worth the points.
The problem is that Vanilla Reloads aren’t everyone, and not every place that carries them will accept credit cards for their purchase. So it’s a scavenger hunt, some people give up frustrated.
Alex’s local CVS now only takes cash but these policies always seem to vary by store — sometimes stores only accept cash. Other times cash or debit. Some place a limit on how much they’ll sell you in a day.
Here’s a story that shows just how much ‘your mileage may vary’ these policies are. And each store has a different story for what their policy is, why it’s like that, and often they relay that the policy applies to all stores in their chain when you’ll find another store in the same city with a different policy.
Some stores believe these are popular amongst drug dealers. Well, we all need to get our fix somehow. In this case, we’re just mileage junkies.
But bottom-line is you need to visit your local CVS and Walgreens stores especially (although Dollar General works too if there’s one nearby), and then suss out what policy will be enforced.
It’s Worth the Time to Search
Vanilla Reloads — along with free transfers up to $1000 a month via Amazon Payments — remain one of the best ways to meet minimum spend for a credit card signup bonus, and it also lets you do things like pay bills which don’t normally accept credit cards (like rent or mortgage) and earn miles.
That’s because American Express Bluebird cards, where most folks put put Vanilla Reload funds onto, allow you to use those funds with their bill payment option where they send checks. So you can effectively buy money with a credit card, then use that money to pay off the credit card. Or use the money to pay rent or mortgage.
Going Beyond Bluebird’s $5000 a Month Limit with Vanilla Reloads
For folks that are the true ‘haves’ amongst mileage collectors — those that have found stashes of Vanilla Reloads they can purchase with a credit card — the greatest wish is to go beyond the $5000 limit per month that Bluebird imposes.
Those folks should consider the My Vanilla Debit card (“My Vanilla Personal Reloadable Prepaid Visa card”). And others can get into the game, too, even without Vanilla Reloads, which I’ll get to in a minute.
You can load $2500 per day onto the card, and can have a balance on it of up to $9999. There’s no billpay function, they charge for ATM withdrawals, and they charge 50 cents for each transactions. Ouch, right?
No. Because as Dan’s Deals wrote earlier in the month, you can get a cash advance at a bank for 50 cents regardless of the amount you’re requesting.
Some banks will only work with a permanent card if you want the cash advance. You can only get up to 3 permanent cards (per person, they register to your social security number, of course each member of your household can have three).
The permanent cards are what you want if you have access to Vanilla Reloads at a Walgreens or CVS near you. Because you then can go well beyond the $1000 per day / $5000 per calendar month limit that Bluebird imposes. And the cash advance fee of 50 cents is the same, whether you’re taking out $500 or $9500.
Reports are that Chase banks can be iffy for this — some don’t like to do it at all, some won’t do it on temporary cards. Lots of positive results with Bank of America. Really, though, it all comes down to whether you have access to a bank that is willing to participate.
Using This Strategy Without Vanilla Reloads
The best case scenario is to find a bank willing to take the temporary cards that you buy at CVS. There’s a $3.95 fee per $500 card, go to a bank and take out all but 50 cents (the cash advance fee).
And do that without limit, you no longer need to worry about finding Vanilla Reload cards at all.
Two Strategies for MyVanilla Debit Cards
That leaves us with two ways to maximize these cards:
- If you can find Vanilla Reload cards that you can purchase with a credit card, max out by getting up to 3 registered MyVanilla Debit cards and you can load up to $2500 x 3 per day. And if you have a bank near you that will give you cash advances, you can take the full balance off each card for a 50 cent fee.
- If you do not have Vanilla Reloads available near you, you want to find a bank that will allow you to cash out temporary cards. These are the ones you buy at CVS for $500 plus $3.95 fee and then cash them out en masse for a 50 cash advance fee apiece.
If you’re in the odd situation of being able to find Vanilla Reload cards but not MyVanilla Debit cards, you can order a starter card online.
(Some folks may even have one of these laying around, I’ve gotten emails from readers that accidently bought these cards instead of Vanilla reloads on their first attempt to fund a Bluebird card.)
A Word of Caution
If you do lots of these over and over with a single credit card or single credit card issuer they may not like it.
Some folks are afraid of American Express ‘financial reviews’ (they want to see lots of financial information like tax returns to make sure you’re able to pay back the credit they’re extending). This scares or enrages some, I’ve always viewed it as a cost of doing business with them.
And I’m always cautious with Citibank because they have a tendency to consider lots of things as cash advances (which don’t earn miles, but do accrue interest). When I’ve opened bank accounts where the initial funding can be done by credit card, I’ve generally done it with a Chase card rather than one from Citibank (even when the bank I was opening the account with was Citi!). Although I don’t see how these purchases would get flagged that way.
But go slow, mix up the cards you’re using for purchase.
This takes work.
You’re going to have to do some of your own investigations if you want to pursue this strategy.
- You need to get out in your town, or wherever you’re traveling, and find Vanilla Reload cards and see what stores that have them are willing to take credit cards for their purchase. Be prepared to be refused, then you have to try another store.
- You need to go into a bank, maybe several. Peronally I’d buy one MyVanilla Debit card and experiment. If I couldn’t ever find a bank willing to give me a $499.50 cash advance for my $500 card, I could always liquidate the card through Amazon payments or fund my Kiva account with it.
This isn’t a ‘sit at your computer terminal, or just hop over to Office Depot’ kind of thing.
It takes investigation and local sleuthing, but when you’ve found the stores that have what you need you’re able to churn out large quantities of miles every month at very little relative cost.
You wrote “Everyone should have one of those cards”
My CVS and WalMart still do not sell Vanilla Reload cards which seems like the main reason for getting BlueBird. Yes I could funnel money through a debit card but don’t have a useful one yet.
I guess you cant fund Bluebird directly with those Amex gift cards from Office Depot then. My CVS sells the vanilla cards and others. Havent checked what office depot sells lately but they carry a decent amount of gift cards. At 5X points it pays for you to get your everyday spend items with gift cards from Office Depot anyway.
Isn’t the BlueBird limit 10k/month for deposits?
can i send money to my bank account from the debit card?
this is not like serve card or is it?
I’ve only been able to load $5k/mth on my (and the wife’s) Bluebird.
What’s your take on whether or not Chase will be closing account holders who charge up a lot in bonus spend while pursuing these strategies? I know they shut down some Chase Freedom perk abusers last year, and there’s now a thread on FT about Sapphire cardholders being shut because of sometimes innocuous point transfers, so I worry it is a matter of time before someone at Chase realizes that something is up with all of the bonus points they’re handing out for gift card purchases at office stores.
@Gary Is there a way to effectively use the MyVanilla Debit starter card as a Vanilla Reload and transfer funds to the permanent debit card?
Would prefer not to run in and ask for a cash advance off a card with no name on it, since that looks a little shady to me, but it might be worth a try since BofA is right near me.
Thanks Gary!
@redcat after you register the starter card online, they will send you a permanent one. Once you register the permanent one, the funds will automatically be transferred from the starter
i am about to start using a serve account! can someome tell me how they process the transaction when you the load the serve account with a credit card? is is cash advance or sale? thank you and happy 2013
I think the idea was to buy a number of starter cards and then transfer funds to a permanent card
The debit strategy is extremely risky. My accounts were shut down after 3 weeks and it’s not like I was doing high volume purchases. As always YMMV.
Do you need to register MyVanilla starter card before you request cash advance?
What about us canadian unlucky guys… ?
Ahh… someone finally reports the MVD approach beyond DD.
Any major bank will give a cash advance on these cards. You don’t need an account at the bank. People having trouble at Chase are asking the wrong thing.
Hi Gary;
Thanks, another great post. Interesting about the cash withdrawal for 50 cents. That makes the cost per mile only the cost of the initial purchase if you do a big enough withdrawal.
Do you know the cpm for the various options using a card without bonuses? Also if one used Amex HHonors (which has a 6x bonus on CVS). And then compare that to how you value them?
Bottomline, is the cpm for HHonors points (with the bonus) a better or worse deal than the Bluebird option (when there is no bonuses, but the miles are valued higher than the HH points).
@Dan
Sad for us!
@Gary: “And do that without limit, you no longer need to worry about finding Vanilla Reload cards at all”
Would it not raise any flags for myvanilla debit if you keep taking cash advance again and again?
I have not seen the MyVanilla cards in stores (Vanilla Reloads, yes, but no MyVanilla cards). What chains sell them? (I’m hoping someone other than CVS, since we don’t have any of those in my state). Thanks.
Oh good. Now 25,000 more people know about this.
It says 3 MVD per SSN..how can you get over this rule and keep buying the temp MVD card beyond 3 cards?
I would advise everyone now to get cash advances from temporary cards. You are asked for your identification and everything is put into a system.
You really do not want to deal with a suspicious activity report (SAR). IT does not matter if you go to another bank. It will really cause a mess.
I would like to know also what AC asked
Will banks provide cash advances against visa or mc giftcards like the visa vanilla card in always see on the racks?
“Well, we all need to get our fix somehow. In this case, we’re just mileage junkies.” LOL – I cant stop laughing!
@ArizonaGuy
was this your own little secret? haha
Are you going to give The Frequent Miler Credit for your post….it seems like you just copied one of his many posts???
FWIW, this post contains a LOT of misinformation. You state:
“If you do not have Vanilla Reloads available near you, you want to find a bank that will allow you to cash out temporary cards. These are the ones you buy at CVS for $500 plus $3.95 fee and then cash them out en masse for a 50 cash advance fee apiece.”
This is totally and blatantly false. It will NOT work. This is because the “unregistered” temporary cards can NOT be cash advanced. I know this because I have tried it myself (in different permutations and at very cooperative banks), have you? Where did anyone even say that this works? Now, you can cash advance a temporary card once its registered, however, you would only be able to do this 3 times per person/SSN since you can’t register more than 3 cards in your name, and would certainly be able to “cash out en masse” like you claim.
If this post is “retaliation” for my comment the other day, I think that is fairly hilarious. If you want to post about this, then no one can stop you as its your blog, but I think at a minimum I’d consider verifying something before posting it like its gospel, or at least update the post to correct the misinformation…
FWIW, FM always personally tests things before posting them, and doesn’t just make stuff up and post it (even MMS, the lowest standard among blogs IMHO), usually tests something himself before posting about it….
So, your claim that someone can “enter the game w/o VR’s” is mostly false. I’m not even going to get into some of the other inaccuracies in this post, I’ll let you and/or your readers discover them for yourselves, I’d say about 10% of what was posted was actually accurate though without getting into more details.
I don’t really think doing this to rack up miles at 1 cpm is worth most people’s time either when factoring in gas costs, time standing in line, etc., given the low transaction limits, or even “using this to meet spending requirements”. The tactic of “using a GC” to buy a VR takes even more time, gas, and money, and has such an extremely remote chance of working it is worth almost no one’s time IMHO….
There are much more time and cost effective ways to spend on a CC IMHO. That won’t get posted about here though, since exposing 25k viewers to such tactics at once would kill most of them due to overexposure. Like someone mentioned the other day, most FT threads take weeks and/or months to get 25k page views. I wouldn’t post about it at FT either though as its a public site anyway though…
This ought to be completely removed from the post as well, as it is impossible IME:
“The best case scenario is to find a bank willing to take the temporary cards that you buy at CVS. There’s a $3.95 fee per $500 card, go to a bank and take out all but 50 cents (the cash advance fee).
And do that without limit, you no longer need to worry about finding Vanilla Reload cards at all.”
One more piece of blatantly false info in this post:
“(although Dollar General works too if there’s one nearby)”
FALSE, Dollar General (system wide) does NOT allow CC’s to be used for VR’s, system blocked by the register, so even if the cashier somehow attempts it, the register will BLOCK it IME. I’ve even tested this at a DG in Florida (in addition to elsewhere).
This is common knowledge and AFAIK no one has claimed otherwise. If you actually read “heelsfirsts” post completely, you would know that she did NOT actually succeed in purchasing a VR or loading a prepaid at a DG, the reason the transaction did not go through is that the register blocks use of a CC, nothing to do with whether or not the cashier is willing to try it….
Lastly, you linked to Dans Deals post on cash advancing temporary MVD cards. Once again, if you had actually read that post, you would know that he did NOT CA an unregistered card, but only did so AFTER he registered it. So, w/o VR’s, that strategy will be limited to 3 cards lifetime per person, not exactly “unlimited” as this post claims….
I hate to be negative but if you abuse this you will ruin it for everyone plus take a chance on shutting down your accounts, points, miles, etc. It’s like speeding down the highway. It’s 55 so you are getting by at 65 without a ticket but if you push it to 90 it’s just a matter of time.
Be aware that some banks charge a fee for a “cash advance” from a credit or debit card not issued by that bank. One of my banks gave the $500 cash advance for no fee (except for MVD’s separately charged fee of 50 cents), but the other bank had a $5 fee for the same cash advance. YMMV.
So if the max load per card is $9999 per month and you can get three cards then it looks like a person could push about 30k a month of spend through using this method. Load up 5k, go to a bank and withdraw and keep repeating with all three cards. Will be able to meet a lot of minimum spend with that!
@Have you even verified… Yes I have verified, yes this works, Dans Deals’ post was predominantly about registered cards but I’m explaining beyond his post that many banks will do cash advances on unregistered cards. Sign the back of the card before going in 🙂
I did correct the Dollar General throwaway comment that I had made, having misread the Heels First experience on that.
And yes i know who you are but i am posting you comments anyway this time (you are the only person I’ve ever chosen to more or less ban from commenting here). You are posting quite incorrectly, you absolutely can cash advance unregistered cards.
@John – in this case I gave Dans Deals primary credit, I consulted his post and the comments extensively. I like the Frequent Miler, I read the Frequent Miler, and I give him credit for a lot of things in this space. But I didn’t learn this from him, and I am not sure he had a blog post that was on point (though he may well have, I just didn’t see it or consult it). Clearly not claiming all thought here is mine originally, as you’ll see in the post I link to a few other blogs.
@Michael I really don’t see the problem you are fearful of
@AC – well there are some folks that seem to have ways of registering more than 3 cards, but as I explain in my post some banks will cash advance unregistered cards in which case there’s effectively no limit
@Zaephod – if you have access to Vanilla Reloads, you can jsut order a MyVanilla online you don’t need to buy one in store — just buy the vanilla reloads, load onto myvanilla, and cash advance
@Murtuza – not if you’re doing it on unregistered cards, what flags? who is doing it? 🙂
So $3.95 to load a maximum of $500. So your per M cost of miles is now $7.90. Then you have to find a way to use it. “IF” the bank would accept it and deposit it on a credit card payment of 50 cents the My Vanilla site still posts a transaction ATM limit of $400 daily. So the practical value of this approach appears limited at best.
@Dan my advice for Canadians is sadly limited. Nice country, though! A bit cold for my tastes. 🙂
@bluto – I know of Chase shutting down folks scripting very large numbers of 1 cent online transactions. And Sapphire Preferred folks transferring points to folks ineligible to receive them. I haven’t heard of verified cases where Chase has shut anyone down for taking advantage of category bonuses.
@Simon – that’s the maximum you can load in Vanilla Reloads onto Bluebird in a calendar month, correct.
@RJ Brown if you are earning 5 points per dollar on the purchases . . .
Gary, thanks for the followup. The only possible explanation I can come up with is that my vanilla and/or Bancorp (card issuer) recently started allowing unregistered (which is done online), temporary/nameless cards to be cash advanced…
Within the last month, I’ve tried at least half a dozen banks. At all locations, the tellers were more than willing to process the transaction with or without the back being signed on the nameless cards but did not get an approval when running the transaction through, it was declined. Once the card was registered with online access though, the nameless card could then be cash advanced at the same bank….
So, IME you CAN definitely cash advance the nameless/temporary cards (no need to wait for the permanent/personalized card in the mail) which are “unregistered” in a way since they have no name, but only after registering them online first, and since you can only register 3 per SSN online, that seems to be the limiting factor…
Given your experience otherwise though, I may need to try additional banks or try again as they could have updated their policy like I mentioned above. FWIW, I tried BOA, Chase, PNC, and several local banks…
I also just reread the comments at dans deals and unless I’m missing something, no one has reported being able to cash advance a “nameless”/temporary card there without first registering it online (still no need to wait for the permanent card though). Interested to hear if anyone else has done this at this point though since you’ve been able to do this…
Gary – I’m missing something here. You get 5x/miles from Office Depot for buying the initial three Vanilla Debit cards, but then you’re refilling them at 1x/mile with Vanilla Reloads from CVS – if you’re lucky to find them with a credit card? This isn’t worth the effort.
Bluto, it is not common, but yes it has happened. I know of at least 3 people including myself who have been closed down (all accounts) by Chase for “spending too much at OD/OM/Staples”.
I was closed down in October (5 accounts total) after purchasing XXk in VR’s at OD over a period of a few months. This accounted for 50% or so of the transactions by volume on my Ink Bold card. I know this is specifically why I was closed down because I escalated the matter to the Chase executive offices and received multiple written replies from their office stating as such.
If you do not believe this Gary (or anyone else), I will be more than happy to email you scans of the letters I received from the Chase executive offices in November regarding the closures after I contacted them.
That being said, I think limiting and spacing OD activity out more and having it be a low percentage of your overall spend on a given Ink account will reduce the risk, but no way to eliminate it entirely IMHO…
Are we willing to share the locations that sell Vanilla Reloads with a credit card? Or is that just wishful thinking on my part. I purchased two cards in one visit in early December. When I returned this week, I was told that I had to pay with cash. I tried two other stores in the area and both require cash as well. 🙁
Sounds like marathon man posting here! Take his information with a grain of salt.
@tim actually I was talking about buying the debit cards if you can find a bank that will do cash advances off of unregistered ones
I wish anyone doing this luck but it seems a little risky for me.
Ike
Gary, can you please take up the above commenter’s offer to email you the letters he received from Chase, so we can put that urban legend to rest once and for all?