I’m back, and here’s my update … it’s a long one and it’s still not over . I have to verify the payments were sent successfully with the NetSpend account and on time! I’ve started a blog because this will be a long journey:
MY ATTEMPT AT PAYING MY MORTGAGE WITH MY SAPPHIRE PREFERRED CREDIT CARD TO GAIN POINTS.
Ok, first my points overview – I want to get to Europe to be with my sweetie. I want to get there free! or nearly free …
So today I tested out my new NetSpend account to see how difficult / or easy it could be to use this method to pay my whopping $2230 mortgage payment (don’t worry – I have renters)
Technically, I don’t pay a dime for my mortgage so I’m justifying the five times $4.95 charge per card to buy PrePaid Vanilla Visa / Mastercard gift cards to load my mortgage payment onto my netspend account. I view this $25 payment as a self discipline method to ensure I will travel. Look at it like a (gross) time share investment – it makes you go!
Here were my goals:
Only buy $500 prepaid cards
Buy 5 prepaid cards to load to my NetSpend Account
Schedule my mortgage payment with NetSpend at the end of the day
Today I went to 3 HEBs a total of 4 times. Three 7-elevens. Three Walgreens, Target and .. I’m sure I’m forgetting one. Let me explain.
Attempt 1: 7-eleven on Airport and 38th 1/2 where before I had seen NetSpend prepaid visa/mastercards for up to $500. The were out and directed me to the Bolm road 7-eleven.
Attempt 2: 7-eleven Bolm & Airport – Great place! Super trashy so none of the workers will care about the ‘rules’ , i.e. nobody cared if I was a prostitute being secretly forced by my pimp to purchase the gift cards and hand them over to him. ( this is what HEB thinks…it’s real) I successfully purchased 2 $500 prepaid Vanilla Mastercard gift cards. Yay!! They looked at me a little funny but ultimately welcomed my big spend business. I kept the last 3/5 of my payment regretfully to try elsewhere.
Attempt 3: HEB Mueller business center – First I noticed that the highest gift card amount was only $200. HEB doesn’t carry $500 amounts. This was frustrating. I asked the CS rep before proceeding if I could pay with a ‘debit card’ , which my Vanilla Mastercard is – a debit card that starts it’s PIN by entering it on the first purchase. As soon as I swiped it, she said ‘ oh no, you can’t use prepaid Credit Cards’ . So I tested her with ‘Really? let’s see if it goes through’ ( I can be a brat sometimes to get my way) Whala! It went through! Whereupon she promptly canceled it. I had to stand there and call the card to make sure she gave it all the money back that I just attempted to load. It was there. Moving on
Attempt 4: HEB Hanco*ck – All the lines were super long on my planned dull day Tuesday. However I approached the ladies in the center who monitor self checkout – they looked young and active – by active I mean they were the kind of girls who couldn’t wait to check their phone and get back to their life outside of work. Which meant less anal than the lady at HEB Mueller – Success! These girls could care less that it was a gift card and loaded half of my mortgage amount onto the NetSpend account. Now I just needed to find a place to purchase the rest. I was afraid if I went back to the first 7-eleven, I would be prevented from purchasing more.
Attempt 5: Walgreens Guadalupe & 45th – I brought 2 $500 gift cards to the counter. Making sure they had the word debit on the tiny image of the card on the front of the package. At the counter was an older lady. Probably not in any hurry to go and check her phone. She denied me buying 2 cards and told me there was a 1 card limit for the amount of $500. Fine. I purchased one.
Attempt 6: 7-eleven guadalupe and 51st or 50th? – a bomb! I walked up grabbed my cards and they told me I wasn’t able to buy them with a credit card. Whatever, I already did before at the first 7-eleven.
Attempt 7: Target I35- another bomb! First of all Target has weird cards and no particular organization in the store of where the cards will all be located. On one isle there was a $500 card and another there was only cards up to $100. I grabbed the two $500. I got confused with what the CS told me, something about the card had to be $500 . I don’t think it was a load as much as you want from $20 up to $500 but a flat $500 . I’ll have to go back and take a picture of these cards to show you guys. She gave me a schbiel about it being expensive to load. whatever. I left. Time was getting short.
Attempt 8: Walgreens near Target I35 – Success! The awesome girl at the counter definitely had a smart phone hidden away and could care less that I brought 2 cards to the counter wanting one to be $500 and the other to be $240. Simple transaction. Now I just had to get back to the HEB to the same girls with phones and load more onto my NetSpend account
* one reason I chose NetSpend was because of my high mortgage and it’s no limit per day load. The other accounts similar to NetSpend, BlueBird – Redbird , had ( I think) a limit of $1000 per day. With all these trips I’ve made, I don’t need 2 days full of this just to rack up points. ugg
Attempt 9: HEB 7th St – my work wasn’t over yet. I had an additional payment pending on my NetSpend account and needed $10 extra in there before it transacted. I stopped here to try out their girls with phones. Success! but … alas it was just with cash that I was loading the account. It was , however after the ‘business center hours’
*note – I called HEB Mueller to ask when their business center closed and if the regular check out isles could load NetSpend accounts. I was told no- that Mueller did not allow the checkouts to load NetSpend – only the business center. weird. Alright won’t be going there again, It looks like my stores are:
1. trashy 7-eleven at Airport & Bolm
2. semi-trashy Walgreens at I35 near Target
4. non fancy HEB at Hanco*ck
and forget the business center people, they are too rigid and will probably not allow using ‘visa / master card debit credit gift cards’ for loading NetSpend. But the middle check out people do!!!
back later for if it all went through. ..
