I get people asking me questions all the time like, “Can I add my wife a second time to my NW Buxx card?” or “Can I add myself as an AMEX AU?” or “Does AGC still work on X portal?” and my answer to these questions is always, “Did you try it?” The reason I give that answer is not to be an ass although it may come off that way, but it’s because I want that person to actually try it for themselves. I think people who like to try things for themselves get very far in the MS game. I mean, who would dare try to use a Home Improvement Gift Card to load a Bluebird at Walmart? That is both ridiculous and preposterous! But you know what? IT WORKED! And I bet if she had never blogged about it, it still would be working to this day because who else in their right mind would dare try such a thing?
But that’s not the point; the point is that people who try things learn more than people who don’t. Now I’m not telling you to do anything illegal or immoral like trying chicken feet, but once in a while, JUST TRY IT YOURSELF. I don’t know if this is a learned trait or a nature vs nurture type of thing, but I remember my 9th grade history teacher talking to us about “critical thinking” one day. It was hard for me to grasp what she meant by that since you know, I excelled at math and there’s no critical thinking in math. You solve some numbers and you move on to the next problem. I didn’t really understand what she meant until many years later, and I still may not fully today. I think what she meant was – think out of the box! Here, let me Google it real fast. Ah, here we go from Criticalthinking.org:
A Definition
Critical thinking is that mode of thinking — about any subject, content, or problem — in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing it. Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It presupposes assent to rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem-solving abilities, as well as a commitment to overcome our native egocentrism and sociocentrism.
Now I don’t know if trying a HIGC card at Walmart is ‘critical thinking’ or just someone who swiped it for shits and giggles and BOOM! it worked, but I think the traits are somehow connected. But let’s say that person was trying to fill out the gift card matrix by asking the question, “What gift cards work at Walmart?” and they tested every gift card possible, that person may find one or two that no one knows about yet. Then he or she can milk that cow before everyone else finds out too.
Imagine if people on FT stopped making posts like, “Does anyone know if XXX card work to pay Citi?” but instead it’s filled with data points like, “Hi, I tried YYY card and it worked.” I think that’s how things were on FT about 2+ years ago. Since then, deals are getting more fragile, so those people who would have posted those types of things have STFU so that they don’t kill the deal. Where did they go? Into the level 3 or 4 private forums and chat rooms that’s where. In there, people don’t ask, “Does X work with Y?” They write, “I found X works with Y.” And it’s a give and take. There are just too many avenues out there for a single person to find and discover them all. Think of it as a pride of lions – you need to be in a pride that are excellent hunters. What you don’t want to be is the one lion that waits for everyone to hunt and you come feed and then take a nap right after. Eventually you’ll be booted out of the pride for not doing your share of the work. This is also why large prides don’t work either; there are just too many mouths and there’s bound to be a lot of freeloaders in the pride. Sorry for the safari tangent there (I really did enjoy my safari ranger.)
Another quick tangent here – this is why I love the people in the Bay area and NYC because they are in the two most barren MS wastelands. They can’t be like the guy in the Midwest who has an Office Depot, Staples, Kroger, CVS, Walmart, and Target all in one shopping area. They’ve had to adapt and find new MS avenues. They try things that most others don’t.
My point is – TRY IT FOR YOURSELF! You’ll come to learn that people will be more responsive to you than if you just ask all the time. I can tell you that when someone emails me and says, “I bet you already knew but X works with Y,” and if it’s something that isn’t widely known, I’m more likely to respond with, “Yes and it works with Z too” whereas I would never tell the first person that X works with Y or Z. And who do you think gets picked to join special level 3 and 4 private forums/chat rooms? You don’t “apply.” The Cardinals can always tell who likes to try stuff, even if it is nasty chicken feet.
Amen!!! I get really tired of the “does XX work with YY?” questions or “what are the steps for XX again?” because answering those kinds of questions is like spoonfeeding and drawing lots of circles and arrows. You took a lot of risk and possible failures, but definitely time/money to discover things yourself, so giving away info for free (not to mention that giving the info away also takes up your time) without anything in return doesn’t make any sense. I think many people have said that the most annoying part is when they ask questions to which publicly available/googleable answers are readily available.
I bet you love chicken feet huh E?
😉
lol vinh, lemme play devils advocate here for a bit even tho I agree with your philosophy in general. folks who tried HIGC to load BB werent the ones willy nilly buying up random store GCs (for bonused spend purposes) in hopes of later finding avenues to unload em. rebecca bought em originally for a house remodeling they were already doing. now it was curious that she saw variable reload store/merchant GCs (similar to our fav VGCs) which is peculiar and inadvertent. and further that they were issued by Discover bank – which isnt immune to the dodd-frank financial reforms that require PINs for all prepaid cards.
esp since the law went info effect in early 2013, she also found out the PIN availability on her acct website. obv not marketed/designed for use at non-hardware stores. so yes it was a eureka moment, but thats just like many other things in life, ppl stumble upon things they werent looking for (like I did with your site 😉 or even this hobby) rather than someone actively pursuing a set path. thats true for many discoveries, inventions and even medicines that come about by accident.
so in these cases, while maybe good practice for noobs, theres really no point wasting time reinventing the wheel. esp when we can work towards a knowledge dump where FAQs are answered for things we know definitely and arent likely to change.
about the lion pride – well the males infact do NOT hunt and do freeload from the kills of the females. they feast and get big, and their role is primarily to defend the pride till death and fight predators that the female lions cant (which are few and far between in the african savannah) … and the reason adult males get kicked out when there are multiples, is not because (the brothers) are free loaders but because the oldest/strongest brother doesnt want his siblings to mate with any of the females around. he wants em all for himself and so the outcasts have to go find another male-free pride or a pride with younger males that they can easily defeat/castigate to perpetuate this cycle.
p.s. I quite like the site redesign on desktop version. mobile is still ofc simple, fast and great!
p.p.s. you still didnt ans the Qs in the beginning of the post. now I’m also curious: can you add yourself as an AMEX AU?!
BW, love your replies.
1) I wasn’t sure how Rebecca found it, but it sounds like a fluke, which probably will never happen again. I agree that reinventing the wheel like trying to swipe Vanilla at WMT is probably a waste of your time…until this happened – http://www.pointchaser.com/issues-with-unloading-vanilla-visa-gift-cards/.
2) Seattle is similar to SF where our WMTs and Krogers want names on cards, and so TO ME, I like talking to the SF people because they have to try alternative ways to MS due to their environment. A guy in the Midwest telling me he does 100K+ because he has 5 working Kates doesn’t help me at all. The SF ppl have to rely more on pajama points than the Midwest, and so they are looking for ways to do that. And when/if WMT stops taking VGC, the Midwest is screwed while SF already has moved on to the next thing.
3) I actually knew about the lion pride thing. It just didn’t make a great analogy/story to my post of the truth about the prides. hahaha
4) AMEX AU- Did you try it?
nah vinh, my point was that its a collective waste of time if everyone is always trying the same thing (whether it be beating a dead horse or banging your head against a wall lol,) … esp when someone already has a definitive answer 😉 hope you notice the nuance in what I’m saying. yes I do try vanillas at WM from time to time. but more often I glance at datapoints on FT in specific threads. there really is no point of me alone trying it every single time I make a trip to WM. collectively however, we can spread out, gather datapoints and cover so much more proverbial ground.
last month when the AMEX checkout offers popped up, I got as far as the screen to adding an AMEX AU, but decided against entering my SSN in the field and continuing forward. esp after I lost my OBC this summer and not being approved for any new AMEX since then, didnt wanna poke the bear any further.
Pajama points FTW!!!!
I have acct that I can add the same person twice as AU 🙂