It took FOUR MONTHS(!) for US Bank to send a replacement hacked gift card

Introduction

If you’ve been in this MS game for a while, then I’m sure you’ve come across a hacked card.  If not, it’s inevitable.  Think of it as an MS “hazing” event.  This usually happens if you buy a US Bank gift card from Kroger/Safeway  and wait days/weeks before you unload it.  When you go to use it, you realize the balance is $0.  When you check online, you see there was a charge that you did not make in a city you were not in.  If this happens to you, then read this post by Travel with Grant.  

What happened to me

I usually go to my neighborhood Kroger’s affiliate, and due to the other HH (Heavy Hitter) in the area, we sorta clear out all their gift cards. We usually clear out the Celebrate cards first since those seem to be newer and less likely to be hacked.  So this one particular day, the store was out of the Celebrate cards, but had the typical purple and white cards (see pic in Grant’s post) that had been there forever.  When I say forever, I’m probably exaggerating; they were probably only a month old.  Even when I picked them up, my spider sense started tingling, but I figure I could liquidate it fast enough and be fine.  So I went home, took them out of the packaging, and let them sit on my desk (until my next trip to Wallyworld.)  Mind you I bought the card on 2/24/15.

A week later, I went to Wallyworld and sure enough, I swiped the card and nothing!  I tried a second card, nothing!  I went home and found out 3 out of the 4 cards that I bought that day had a $0 balance.  I had another batch from a different store that I also bought on 2/24.  I went through the process of filing the claims on all 5 hacked cards.  I faxed in the claims.  I didn’t hear anything back for about a month.  Then one day, they sent me 3 affidavits to fill out basically saying I did not authorize the purchase.  I thought it was odd that I only got 3 instead of 5, but I had remembered that 1 or 2 out of the 5 were just “locked” and not “hacked with a $0 balance,” so I didn’t think I needed affidavits for all 5 cards (which you don’t btw.)  I didn’t think anything of it and faxed back in the 3 affidavits.  In hindsight, I should have called them then to ask what happened with the other 2.

THREE MONTHS LATER, they finally send me the replacement cards.  See the picture above.  The fraudulent charge was on 3/1 (a week after I bought the card.)  They mailed me my replacement card on 7/7/15, which was over 4 months later.  I then called them up to ask what happened to the other 2 cards, and they said they never got the fax and I had to start over.  This puzzled me since I sent in all 5 cards ON THE SAME FAX!!!   Whatever.  Guess I didn’t pass GO and collect my $500.  Now I have to wait for probably another 4 months before I get my last $1000.

Moral of story – Like miles and points, load and unload as fast as you can!  No more “stockpiling” cards for me.  Lastly, make sure you have the float.  For some people, not having $2.5K for 4 months could derail their MS game.