Earn More Points Through Amazon?

[Apinzon2374]

I'm hoping that someone would be able to shed some light on this as I want to make sure it's not something I can get in trouble for doing.

I was reading an article earlier about a guy who wanted to fly business class and already had 97,000 points and just needed 13,000 more in order to get it. The person who was helping him with his goal recommended that he "fake," his spending by sending money via Amazon payments to someone and have the money cashed into their account. The other option was buying Vanilla reloads with a CC and loading the balance into the AMEX Bluebird to pay off the CC balance.

It sounds like a really good idea and I thought about doing it. Except in my case I wouldn't be "faking," my spending. For example, we pay our rent in cash. So I would send $1000 through Amazon payments, withdraw it and pay the rent. Then deposit the money I was already going to spend on rent into my account and pay the balance.

Is it "right," to do this just for the sake of earning more points/cashback? Could I get in trouble with the CCC's for doing this? Could my cards be canceled because of this?

What do you guys think of this method?

Thanks.

[longtimelurker]

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@Apinzon2374 wrote:

I'm hoping that someone would be able to shed some light on this as I want to make sure it's not something I can get in trouble for doing.

I was reading an article earlier about a guy who wanted to fly business class and already had 97,000 points and just needed 13,000 more in order to get it. The person who was helping him with his goal recommended that he "fake," his spending by sending money via Amazon payments to someone and have the money cashed into their account. The other option was buying Vanilla reloads with a CC and loading the balance into the AMEX Bluebird to pay off the CC balance.

It sounds like a really good idea and I thought about doing it. Except in my case I wouldn't be "faking," my spending. For example, we pay our rent in cash. So I would send $1000 through Amazon payments, withdraw it and pay the rent. Then deposit the money I was already going to spend on rent into my account and pay the balance.

Is it "right," to do this just for the sake of earning more points/cashback? Could I get in trouble with the CCC's for doing this? Could my cards be canceled because of this?

What do you guys think of this method?

Thanks.

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Repeated Amazon Payments to yourself can get you shutdown by Amazon.  So can A sending payments to B and then B to A, especially on the same card.  But A to B, B withdraws and sends check to A seems to work fine.

Small amounts of VR are also fairly safe.

However, there is a risk with any of these methods, a credit card company can decide to close your account for any reason, and this is an excuse they can use.

[enharu]

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@Apinzon2374 wrote:

I'm hoping that someone would be able to shed some light on this as I want to make sure it's not something I can get in trouble for doing.

I was reading an article earlier about a guy who wanted to fly business class and already had 97,000 points and just needed 13,000 more in order to get it. The person who was helping him with his goal recommended that he "fake," his spending by sending money via Amazon payments to someone and have the money cashed into their account. The other option was buying Vanilla reloads with a CC and loading the balance into the AMEX Bluebird to pay off the CC balance.

It sounds like a really good idea and I thought about doing it. Except in my case I wouldn't be "faking," my spending. For example, we pay our rent in cash. So I would send $1000 through Amazon payments, withdraw it and pay the rent. Then deposit the money I was already going to spend on rent into my account and pay the balance.

Is it "right," to do this just for the sake of earning more points/cashback? Could I get in trouble with the CCC's for doing this? Could my cards be canceled because of this?

What do you guys think of this method?

Thanks.

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What you are talking about is known as manufactured spending.

As long as the credit is being converted back into cash or cash equivalents, it is regarded as manufactured spending. It doesn't matter if you are really using the money from amazon payments for legitimate purposes, or if the money is going to be parked in your bank account.

It is not a right thing to do, nor is it a wrong thing to do either. 

You can get into trouble with CCCs for doing manufactured spending, and they can close all your accounts, and even blacklist you for doing so. This will depend on the lender itself, and their tolerance level for manufactured spending. 

Generally, 1000 each month in manufactured spend is highly unlikely ever get you into any trouble, though there's still always going to be some risk for any kind of manufactured spend. People who get into trouble generally abuse manufactured spending to ridiculous extents, though there are also a small number of cases where people have had their accounts closed for just doing a little MS.

Also to add, Amazon may shut down your account and blacklist you if they detect excessive abuse, since you're essentially costing them money by having them pay for interchange fees just so you can milk some rewards out of them. 

Whether you get into any trouble is going to depend on how far you take things, and also partially on your luck. 

[Apinzon2374]

Well I learned something new.

I'm glad I came here first before even thinking about doing this. I don't want to risk anything because of this even though it would get my extra points. And I definitely don't want to be black listed by any lender.

I'd rather just pay rent like we do now. It's not worth the risk, at least all of my other bills can be payed directly with the CC rather than having to go through something like this. So I'll still earn cashback/points without risking losing my CC's and being blacklisted.

Thanks for the helpful knowledge you all provide. Like I said, I'm glad I asked before getting myself into any trouble over this.

[longtimelurker]

Yes, manufactured spend is one of those things it makes sense to either not do it at all or to do it a lot (I do about $20K a month which is still fairly small by most standards).   This is because the risk is fairly constant, and it makes no sense to take the risk for small amounts of potential gain.   And purely a personal choice whether to do it or not....