“Washing gift cards” doesn’t mean you are safe

Introduction

What is “washing gift cards” you ask?  It’s when you buy a gift card from a 3rd party exchange and you are concerned it’ll go ‘bad’ on you, and so you buy a different gift card using that gift card.  Here’s an except from an article about a Starbucks hack:

Early in the morning on May 6, criminals stole $34.77 in value that the Orlando, Fla., resident had loaded onto her Starbucks app by transferring it to a gift card they controlled. Immediately, her account was reloaded with $25 because her balance had hit zero. The criminals stole that, too. Then they upped the ante, changing her auto-reload amount to $75, and stealing the $75, all within seven minutes.

By the way, this happened to me as well on my Starbucks account.  The thieves would then “wash” the stolen gift card in store or something and then sell the “clean card” on eBay or so.  By the way, this sounds very much like ML huh?  Funny how our hobby looks very much like a criminal activity.

Why a “washed” gift card isn’t safe

I treat all 3rd party gift cards as a hot potato.  You want to use that thing ASAP.  If you can’t use it ASAP, you may think “washing” it is safer than holding the hot potato. In most cases this is correct, but I just heard recently from a reader that his “washed gift card” got nullified by the retailer.  When he called the retailer, they told him that the gift card he had bought was bought with a gift card that was bought with a stolen cc.  Man that’s some deep stuff there.  I don’t remember who the retailer was, but it’s safe to assume that all retailers will get here in the future.

So what now?

The only sure way of not being stuck with a bunch of ‘bad’ gift cards is to not buy from a 3rd party exchange unless you plan to use the GC within the return window.  While ‘washing’ it is safer than keeping the ‘bad’ GC, it’s no longer 100% foolproof.  Stay safe out there.