Introduction
Okay, I know most of you just rolled your eyes and called this a stupid conspiracy theory, but hear out my story first. I was up at Walmart last Saturday, loading the rest of my Staples $200 from the AMEX offers from December (see how my MS has slowed down.) Anyway, I had JUST gotten to the Kate and finishing up my first load when this Tahsir lookalike walked up behind me. I turned to him and asked, “Do you need to use the ATM or are you loading Serve?” He smiles at me and says, “Bluebird.” I then asked him how much he was going to load, and he said $900, with 3 x $300. Since it was a small amount, I let him go next.
“How are you not shut down?”
First off, let me just say that I was a bit tipsy at this point due to the sake at dinner, so my memory is a bit hazy. Anyway, when he was loading his BB, I figured I’d ask, “How are you not shut down?” He looked confused. I clarified, “Yeah, with the big shut down wave in January.” He still looked confused. Clearly he doesn’t read the blogs or else he’d know. I then asked if he did the max $5K load each month. He goes, “No, I load maybe only a thousand a month.”
I then told him how AMEX shut down a lot of people in January since it wasn’t a profitable business for them. He gave me the, “Are you kidding look?” Then he shakes his head and sorta chuckles, “Oh no, they ARE making money off this. Maybe not a lot, but they are. People in the South where there aren’t that many banks, use this stuff.”
Then he goes on to say, “No, they probably shut it down because there was a massive Chase / AMEX fraud investigation.” Now I was giving him a confused look. He continued to say that AMEX and Chase knows that some of the cards are stolen. I can’t remember if he meant that the gift cards were stolen or that the Chase card used to buy the GCs were stolen.
I then asked him why Chase didn’t just shut down the Ink abusers. He goes, “Well, because there are actual legit businesses out there that spend $50K at office supply stores.” Then he goes on to say that they actually do close down about 1,000 accounts a month. This is when I ask, “You seem to know a lot about this insider information.” He slyly goes, “Well yeah, that’s because I work for Chase.”
I then go back to the gift cards topic and he kept saying that Chase KNOWS the whole Ink/GC/BB game. I told him they can’t know where I used that specific gift card… as in, Chase doesn’t know the gift card number that I bought from Staples and knows how I unloaded it. He smilingly goes, “Yes, they do.” I go, “NO! They don’t know the exact 16 digit card number that I bought.” He goes, “No, but they know it’s a Metabank card that you bought [at Staples] and they know Metabank cards are loaded to Bluebird.”
Then he says that this whole gift card “thing” is going to be shut down in a year or so. That it’s so easy to just steal someone’s credit card, go buy a gift card, and then load it onto Bluebird. I was going to ask him about the whole Dodd-Frank debit card PIN thing, but he was done with his loads and left.
What do we know?
- A. AMEX shut down a lot of Serve accounts
- B. There is a lot of fraud on Chase cards (my Ink AU was frauded even though I ONLY used it to get a Priority Pass card)
- C. There was a big Chase-AMEX fraud investigation (let’s assume this is true since I don’t think the guy made this up)
The question now is – did B cause C which led to A? Did Chase actually tell AMEX to shut us down because of a fraud investigation? IF THIS HAPPENED, my guess is that Chase was seeing a lot of fraud on the credit card side and was trying to figure out what people were buying with stolen credit cards (B). They noticed stolen cc were buying a lot of gift cards. I’m sure they also saw random charges at stores, but you have to believe that gift cards made up the bulk of fraudulent charges. They then followed the gift cards to see where they were being used (maybe they got USB and Metabank involved too.) I’m sure they saw the gift cards being used at Walmart (and maybe asked them to be involved too.) Then that’s when they noticed that a lot of [legitimate] gift cards were being used to buy money orders and loaded to BB/Serve. Maybe they asked AMEX to look into the heavy users of Serve who were max loading and not using the card as intended. Now AMEX doesn’t know if we loaded with a legit GC or a stolen GC, but they just assumed all max loading users were too risky for business and that’s when the axe came down.
Now I know that paragraph was a stretch. But if this was a criminal trial for the death of your Serve and AMEX was the defendant pointing to Chase as the culprit, isn’t there enough reasonable doubt that maybe AMEX did it to appease Chase? Whether you believe Chase had something to do with the shutdowns is up to you. I’m just telling you a story that was told to me. You can believe it or not. I’m not forcing my opinion down on you. Do I believe Chase had a hand in it? Did Jay have a hand in Hae Min Lee’s death?
Not a complete surprise. One time, I was at a Simon mall in the midwest where they just moved the desk into mall management office. I bought about 8K in vgcs and I made small talk with a young lady I never seen before. I took a few to the walmart and left the rest for the following week since I know where the friendly wms at. Surprisingly, my usual 2K mo stopped short with 3 of my 8 cards to work. Checked online and four of the vgcs weren’t even registered and two others had been depleted within days at a fast food resturant and a store in the mall (totaling $~400). I went back and talk to the advertising manager since the gm wasn’t there. He said he doesn’t know why they still do this and their gift cards sales will end soon probably. Yay right! Pretty obvious that employee skimmed four cards and had the card numbers (!!!) somehow of ones in my possession. I had four blanks and she had the guts to use the ones that work in my possession also. They of course gave me a refund and no explanation to what happened. Imagine what the credit card company would have to deal with if this was thousands of more dollars. It may not seem like a problem in the eyes of msers, but it’s problematic for the ones who sell and buy them!
I’d have to give the employee some credit for learning how to skim and make false cards. Guess that’s more profitable than minimum wage.
Even interesting things are happening in MN that could add on to your conspiracy theory within the last month! Two huge places have seen changes in my area. Fraud seems like the definite explanation.
The Simon mall in Eagan where I live by had an influx of MSers from in Edina (rich person town). Lady told me the Edina people were surprised by the SARS form they had to fill out. I was told one person bought 1.5K and came back for 1.5K more when the CSR switched shifts to avoid it! I have been to Edina and you could 10K worth (!!!) of VGCs without the form in the past two years, but they sell out in thirty minutes. I noticed a new guy manning the day shift in Edina right before this happened and he must have messed up bad with fraud or someone using gift cards to pay it! After I heard the news in Eagan, I went to see what happened. Edina mall the next month had moved the vgcs into the mall management office and me filling the out the form. Corporate came down on them bad—the CSR even had to mark $500 on each of the card holders while the manager watched!
I also started buying once again variable $500 VGCs in January with the Blue Cash Preferred at Cub Foods. These places have literally a whole shelf dedicated to all sorts of designs for Mastercards and VGCs loaded up to $500 Metabank with credit card purchases for the past two years I have been doing this. Now the past 30 days, they pulled all of them in at least four places in the Minneapolis area and replaced them with $100 or less in all of these stores. One store had 20 hangers saying VGCs will be back soon! That was over three weeks ago.
Coincidence both of these events happened within the last month? Maybe. A simon mall where you don’t need fill out a SAR form (if any others in the US?) and the only grocery chain in MN with $500 variable gcs that take cc suddenly change. It could have been major fraud by a common criminal or some lucky MSer who got the attention of the credit card company. MS is slowly dwindling…
And now I have to go listen to Serial.
For sure! Then watch “Making a Murderer” on Netflix.
Amex was and is losing money on the Serve program. They were especially losing money on MSers like me who generated zero revenue for them in credit card interchange fees. That’s plenty enough reason for the shutdown of the cards.
Could some kind of Chase fraud investigation been a catalyst of some kind? Sure. Something specific had to be the spark. But Amex’s more general failure with Serve ultimately made this inevitable in the long term.
I think you mean they are losing money from the MS’ers. They must be making enough money from the intended audience, else they would have just killed the entire product line.
If this is true, then they cast too wide a net when they shut me down. I never loaded with gift cards. I only loaded with Amex online (as was specifically advertised!) and paid legitimate bills. I’m thinking of opening a new account since I really didn’t break any rules.
You were probably just collateral damage. I still have 1 account that has been open for 3 years that I abused the heck out of. The account must have been ducking when they were firing away.
Out of curiosity, do you agree with my sentiment that I didn’t break any rules? If they advertise the ability to load $1,000 a month with an AmEx and I actually pay bills, is that considered manufactured spending?
Oh I agree with you, but I don’t think they’ll let you get a new card (you’ll get an error when trying.)
You were right. Denied for both the VIP and regular Serve cards. Does AmEx do a Chexsystems pull?
No, your SSN is flagged. Find a buddy or a relative and open in their name.
I do not think AMEX did the shutdown FOR Chase, but once it was shown their Serve cards were INVOLVED in large scale fraud, their legal departments, and maybe (as Julian has written about this week) the feds were also involved and to shield themselves from more involvement in fraudulent enterprises, pulled the plug on almost (but obviously not all) everyone using Serve in any way looking like it might be involved in this stuff. There may even be a geographical distribution factor as well.
There are a LOT of things the various federal agencies see and look into at times, and not just financial stuff either. I was a federal agent for a law enforcement segment and we saw and learned about a LOT of things that were not necessarily in our jurisdiction or wheelhouse, as you might say. Siometimes info was passed on, someimes not.
However, if you think you are flying under the radar of an agency, you are usually wrong.
Good point Carl. I don’t think they did it FOR Chase, but the involvement with Chase probably made them rethink their Serve strategy.
Except there are plenty of reports of people who did moderate MS and did not get shut down.
Also, on all my accounts it’s clear I send a bill payment to Chase in the same amount as loads. Pretty easy for anyone to tell I’m not a scammer and yet I got shut down as well. You all seriously think AMEX suspects 100k+ people in CC fraud?
The explanation is much simpler, they finally got sick of running a money losing business and cleaned house. We didn’t so much lose them money as bloated the numbers. They probably wanted to reduce ranks to true users and see what they have left to decide if the program survives at all. I bet it won’t. In every WM I went to, not a single cashier ever told me Serve or BB was used by the regular customers.
Yeah, I believe it… but either way, Adnan was still the one who was the motivating factor.
Plausible…
Hmmm.