@masscredit wrote:I tried using a $300 gift card to buy a $299 money order at Walmart this afternoon. Very smooth transition! The MO cost $1. I guess I'll be clearing out all my GCs this week.
Wow, there you go! The $1 would bother cheap me but, honestly, that's not bad. And if you can spend that $299 using a 1%, 1.5%, 2% CB card, you are ahead! (~$3, $4.50, $6 CB) Smart!
So, you make the MO out to yourself I suppose?
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@masscredit wrote:Well... this isn't going as smooth as I thought it would. First, when you get a woman named Karen in customer service, things might not turn out well (no offense to any Karens here lol). I figured I'd cut down on the number of stops to buy MOs so I told her I wanted to buy two for $198.00 each. I then asked her to ring them seperate. She told me she couldn't do that. Seeing that I told her I wanted to buy two, she'd have to ring them together. Sigh... So I asked what would happen if I buy one then get in line to buy another one. She said "I have to ring them together". OMG... Okay Karen... So I told her I just wanted one. She rang it up, $199.00 total with the fee, I swipe the card, enter the pin then... declined! Karen was loving life then. She noticed my card and told me I can't use a debit card like that to purchase a money order. At that point I was defeated so I said okay and told her I didn't know that. I had some errands to do so I stopped into another Walmart that was in the area. I tried again and was declined. I think the difference is yesterday I used a gift card that was purchased at Walmart. This one wasn't. I'll put that theory to the test by trying that one again.
Next up was creating a second Venmo account then requesting money from that to my main account. That didn't work. Can't use a burner number though an app. And finally, I read I can link the cards to my PayPal account then pull the money off that way. I just linked one. Waiting for the $1.95 charge to confirm the card. That will take a few days. Then I'll see if it works. If not, I'll just have to suck it up and use them for monthly expenses for a couple of months.
Oh, I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, it was suggested that I could buy things then return them to get cash back. I haven't tried that but everything I read when I looked it up said they have to refund me the same way that I paid. I don't know if they would give me a Visa gift card or a store gift card which would be worst.
You're confusing us! You first called them gift cards. Then, when asked additional questions, you said they were pre-loaded credit cards (I don't consider those gift cards). So I had assumed you bought the MO with a pre-loaded credit card, not a Wal-Mart gift card.
I was the one that suggested buying and returning. And that's why I said find a store with a liberal return policy. You have two ways of doing this. Make a small purchase and return it. Many stores will give cash up to a certain $ amount, regardless of how you paid. Like Walmart. But it might be low, like $10 so that's why I said it will take you a while, lol. The other option is to go in without your original receipt. I think they will give you cash and probably up to an amount beyond $10, but they may ask for your ID and limit you to only a handful of no receipt returns per year. But be prepared for them to give you store credit instead of cash.
Did you look into how much sites like cardcash or raise would give you for your cards?
I would just use what you have for everyday things like gas, dining, and groceries. 
@ptatohed wrote:
You're confusing us! You first called them gift cards. Then, when asked additional questions, you said they were pre-loaded credit cards (I don't consider those gift cards). So I had assumed you bought the MO with a pre-loaded credit card, not a Wal-Mart gift card.
I was the one that suggested buying and returning. And that's why I said find a store with a liberal return policy. You have two ways of doing this. Make a small purchase and return it. Many stores will give cash up to a certain $ amount, regardless of how you paid. Like Walmart. But it might be low, like $10 so that's why I said it will take you a while, lol. The other option is to go in without your original receipt. I think they will give you cash and probably up to an amount beyond $10, but they may ask for your ID and limit you to only a handful of no receipt returns per year. But be prepared for them to give you store credit instead of cash.
Did you look into how much sites like cardcash or raise would give you for your cards?
I would just use what you have for everyday things like gas, dining, and groceries.
They are gift cards. The amount was chosen when I purchased them (can't be reloaded). They say Visa Debit in the corner. I set them up with pin numbers after I registered them. Doing more research, the Walmart visa gift card probably issued by Green Dot. It works for to purchase money orders at Walmart. The other GCs were issued by MetaBank and serviced by Blackhawk. Those didn't work. I thought they were all created equal when I bought them. Didn't know it was better to have certain GCs if I had extras at the end.
I'd like to make the least amount of trips out to do all this. Getting small dollar amounts with a return wouldn't be worth it to me. $200+ at a time would be. I'll probably try it at a store to see what happens. Maybe Walmart, Best Buy or Target. Even if I only do it once at a store, that helps chip away at these. I haven't tried any sites to see how much they would give me but based on what I've read, I may lose 15-30% by doing that. I'd do it for 5% and would have to think about it if I was going to lose 10%. Won't give up any more than that.
They might end up being used for everyday things. I'm kind of excited to give my new cards some use to build history and have two of them on the way to graduating so I rather use them first. The GCs might sit in the drawer for a few months.
Do any of the VISA debit cards have expiration dates? The fine print I read on some back in the day requires a keep-alive fee beyond a certain day.
I probably shouldn't ask, but you bought these cards?
If you are trying to put spend on your regular cards, you can do both. At checkout, ask the cashier to run a portion on one of the gift cards first, then the balance on one of your regular CC. This can also help you keep track of the remaining balance on each gift card, $100 GC being stepped down $20 at a time, rather than $23.86 then complex math to keep track.
Congrats on getting the cards cashed out!
Hello,
With all of the Visa GC's I received over the holidays, wondering if anybody has a creative way to convert them to cash in the bank?
