Safeway fee free VISA GCs 1/22 - 1/28

Variable load VISA GCs which can SOMETIMES be purchased with a credit card (register allows it) and can be unloaded to BB with a PIN:

http://first2board.com/milenomics/no-fee-visa-gift-cards-122-128-safeway-stores/

 

In the store in my neighborhood, these cards had been placed on a small rack at the customer service desk rather than at the big, multi-paneled rack for all kinds of gift cards in one of the aisles. The transaction went through without a glitch and I purchased one card with a pre-load of $500 plus some cereal boxes in the same transaction to make the charge on my Surpass to come out as a non-rounded amount. There does not seem to be a limit on the number of cards purchased, or is there one?

Caution: This card should not be used as a reloadable pre-paid debit card by trying to reload it from the VR card, after the initial store loaded $500's run out,
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/manu...vision-prepaid-mastercard-safeway-vons-8.html

 

Purchased yesterday with no issue at local Safeway. Unloaded to BB at Walmart this AM no issue.

 

Would these be usable as a debit card for tax payments, as-is?

 

In theory. When you call the phone number on the front to enable the card and assign it a pin they spend a little time talking about their program to allow you to get your tax refund on this card. And anyway you can then assign it a PIN as usual. No issues other than the time it takes. Obviously they're also trying to serve the "unbanked" and the primary reason these cards exist is just like Bluebird, and they want you to get a permanent one, reload it, etc. But given the fees you should consider carefully whether you want to do that. I'd rather just unload it immediately to BB and then toss the temporary card without ever getting a permanent one. I assume you could however go to the website and enter your info and turn it into a permanent card with your name on it, load it up etc. I did not investigate what the issues with that might be as the general guidance has been that BB is better. You might want to look into that if you have different ideas. I presume you might run into problem if you want to have more than one permanent card in your name and so forth.

 

A better use of this card (for future promotions) would be to buy VONS gift cards ($500 worth) from an office supply store with no fee, and then use them to buy this card loaded to $500. This gets you 2500 points from your INK card for no fee.

 

We'll see how this develops. The Safeway I hit in San Jose would only let me buy one with cash. Which given that it says "Cash Only" on the card is pretty reasonable. But anyway, I'll pick up a couple more when I'm back home in the next day or so to round out my BB limit this month.

If the rumors of a coming $0 fee PayPower VISA card are correct, this could be around for longer than a week the next time it resurfaces. There have actually been posts of the new card packaging with the $0 printed right on it. Presumably they're trying to entice the non-banked prior to tax season. Maybe it'll go back up after that. Dunno.

 

Yup, the rumors are true. There were PayPower reloadable VISAs at my California Safeway today with a $0 fee. Bought one at the cash. Other attempts to buy these at Safeway have been mixed. The register allows it, but if the cashier knows the rules or even reads the card they'll tell you its cash only. YMMV.

 

I guess the $0 fee cards have not hit all stores as I did not see them at my Vons.