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Comment by ngoel36 | Hacker News Reader

Not if you participate in manufactured spending - i.e., buying money...like purchasing Visa gift cards (must be done carefully at the right places / times)

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I didn't know there was a term for it. I gave it a shot one or two years ago buying $500 gift cards at grocery stores with a 6% cash back card (amex cash preferred). With the activation fee and taxes, I think each gift card purchase essentially returned ~$22. Surely not the most efficient - but it was simple. Each time I bought a $500 visa gift card I had that uncomfortable feeling like I was doing something illegal - the cashier calls out some code on the intercom and the manager shows up 5 minutes later to allow the purchase to go through. It wasn't worth the hassle - at the end of the year I might have made $150 - whoopty doo. At least I made enough money to pay off the annual fee for the card ($75).

The payoff comes from doing it to hit signup bonuses. If you needed to spend $5000 on a card, you could buy Visa gift cards and spend $59.50, but get 105,000 miles from the bonus.

Essentially a round-trip business class ticket from the US to Asia.

And what do you do with the $5000 of gift cards?

There are various methods that you can use to unload the cards back to either your checking account or directly to the credit card you used to buy them.

Buy gift card with credit card -> Unload gift card back to credit card. Repeat. Send the same $5000 around in a circle (less fees). I'm simplifying of course.

Bluebird, a prepaid debit card from Amex and Walmart, has been one of the big methods for some time but I'm not sure if that one is still viable.

They were visa gift cards. He could use them like a regular credit card.

many times what you will end up with is $XXXX in non-transferable gift cards or you will have to sit on them. in those cases you just use them to pay your bills or use them as your spending cash etc.

Well, you are spending money on those. Each card has a fee. But if you're doing it correctly you should realize far more value than you end up spending.

Fairly certain all cards dont have fees.

> Fairly certain all cards dont have fees.

While I don't deny the possibility that you're right, if you're not involved in the community I'd consider it far more likely that people have already found the most effective manufactured spend techniques.

As an example, CC charge -> Amex GC w/ cashback from rewards site -> Visa GC w/ PIN -> ATM or money order to withdraw is a fairly "simple" MS chain. The convolutions that people have discovered past that get pretty byzantine. But even <1% adds up when you're churning 5 figures.

The lengths of some of the schemes are entertaining in their own right.

Which Visa gift cards don't have fees?

Except for rare promotions, they have $4-$7 in per-card and/or per-month fees.

If you know a year-round supplier of $0 fee cards, let us know ;)

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