A Guide to Points, Miles and Free Travel
It’s been a bad week for many folks out there who had their Serve and Bluebird accounts shut down. As I previously explained, I don’t think this news is quite as terrible as everyone is making it out to be. There are lots of other options out there for earning […]
Yesterday’s news of the mass shutdowns of Amex Bluebird and Serve prepaid cards came as a shock to many people. There were no quiet rumblings, in-store memos, or signs of trouble like when Vanilla Reloads and Redbird went down. It all came out of nowhere. As a result, lots of […]
I woke up today, well past noon, from a Nyquil induced sleep to some terrible news: Both the American Express Bluebird and Serve prepaid cards are dead as far as manufactured spending goes. Several readers got email notices that their accounts were shut down for “unusual usage patterns” – reports […]
A lot has changed on the manufactured spending front in the past year. Target stopped accepting gift cards and credit cards for Redbird loads, shopping portals stopped offering cash back on American Express gift card denominations over $200 and Serve stopped accepting Visa, MasterCard, and Discover credit cards for online […]
I may need to rename this series because these days it seems like the only time I’m actually doing any manufactured spending is on weekends. The week before last, I was preoccupied with jury duty. Last week I spent three days visiting the offices of a social media company in […]
It’s been three weeks since the demise of Redbird and already some people are switching back to the American Express Bluebird or Serve card. Up until recently, I had decided not to bother switching to either card, since I was content liquidating Metabank Visa gift cards through money orders, but […]
Update: Redbird is officially dead. Both NoonRadar and reader Gregory (who is a part time Target employee) have confirmed the existence of a memo stating that going forward, Redbird loads would be restricted to cash only. About two weeks ago I reported my experience at Roseville area Target stores, where […]
It’s almost summer, which means some of you will be scrambling to tie up lose ends before heading off on vacation. There are graduation ceremonies to attend, projects to complete way in advance before you can unchain yourself from your desk for two weeks, and some of you (or maybe […]
As of May 6, 2015 Redbird can no longer be loaded with credit cards or Amex gift cards. I’ve been getting lots of emails lately about whether I’ve had success loading my not-so-recently acquired Redbird card. I picked up the card last month when I was in Michigan and found […]
Lately, I’ve been slacking off when it comes to manufactured spending. So much so, that other than a monthly $1,000 credit card load, I’ve been letting someone else use my Serve card. I did put forth some effort and picked up five Redbird cards on my trip to Michigan but […]