How best to liquidate $800 in rebate debit cards?

If these are embossed with your name like a lot of rebate cards are ask your bank if they can run them as cash advances for you. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. Most banks I have done it at charge $0 for this service.

Yes they are but the teller at Capital One said they won’t cash it.

Try Chase, I’ve done them there.

Or local CUs, they’re friendly about that kind of thing too.

TMSY’s Money order idea will probably work as well, and the fees are low enough that you should probably consider.

If you use them for organic spending, you’ll miss out on the 2% cash back your credit card gives which is $16 on $800.

I think the value of time myself and the other posters in this thread have put in so far (even at just 2 minutes each) greatly exceeds $16.

No offense intended, but sometimes it’s not worth min-maxing every penny. The amount of time you’ll wait in line at WalMart buying Money Orders will vastly exceed the $16 saved.

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I have 10 cards total. I can’t buy one money order for all of them? If I’m going to Walmart anyway I don’t mind waiting in line.

Lord no.

The 4-swipe crowd has driven many WMs to ONE SWIPE per transaction, and the idiots that keep showing cashiers their GCs could prevent you from doing any transaction.

Why not do Express BillPay ? You can do 5 transactions per account in a rolling 30 day period, so paying two accounts would utilize all ten cards in single swipes.

DO NOT SHOW ANY CASHIERS YOUR CARDS. If any demand to see them, either show them a bank debit card and palm-off the GC, or slide a bank debit card, input the wrong PIN and say the bank said all their cards are glitching and live to fight another day.

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LOL. Does this still work? I need to work on my palm-off skills.

If they have your name you should be fine. The other option is Kiva loans but that has risk. On the other hand you could feel good about giving some poor entrepreneur in South America or Africa your money, if they don’t pay you back (98% do, but there’s always the 2% that pay late).

I doubt it will work. They are trained if they see a chip to have you insert the card. When you swipe it’ll be obvious.

No idea what you mean here. What is a 4-swipe? Why not show the cashiers the cards? And no pin is associated with these.

If I paypal you the $16 will you use them for Organic spend?

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TripleB’s advice is really solid here. Use them to prepay your utility bills, buy gift cards to gas stations you go to. If you buy on Amazon a lot buy a bunch of Amazon GC with them.

You’ll be wasting a lot of time if you’re starting out now trying to figure how to drain these through MS.

I haven’t needed to do it in years, yet just a couple days ago when I was doing billpay at KMART a manager I’d never seen at the CS counter asked if my name was on the card after we were already doing the second bill. I showed her my bank card and went right back to using GCs.

It works if you know what you’re doing.

Nah.

Actually, one of my legit bank debit cards still doesn’t have a chip. Places like Aldi and many others still only allow swipes. We’re not quite there yet.

Probably best you stay away from WM.

It’s likely the last four digits, or in some rare cases with rebate cards, the first four. Depends on the issuing bank.

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Yes I’m new at this. Just paid my Verizon bill with 2 of the cards and now have a small credit. I assume there is no service charge doing this or it would have mentioned that.

Wouldn’t you be able to make a purchase at any grocery store and request additional cash back, e.g. buy a few 6-packs of PBR and ask for another $80.00 cash on an $100.00 debit card?

Most rebate debit cards don’t allow cash back (or any cash access, such as a bank cash advance). But occasionally you get lucky:

I once drained a stack of $100 gift cards at a grocer by buying a few yogurts and getting cash back. I figured out what the total cost would be first, so I could quickly request the balance in cash back at the self check out.

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Oiiii! Definitely please don’t try liquidating these at WM if you don’t know what you’re doing. It wouldn’t be worth the learning curve or your time to try to liquidate multiple low balance cards. I’d use them for generic spend on everyday purchases or you can prepay your bills (no, I’ve never heard of any vendor charging a fee to prepay your bill). With cell, water, gas, electric, garbage, etc, it shouldn’t take long to prepay and get your accounts back to $0. Shoot, go on Amazon as one poster mentioned and load some Amazon gift cards to your account. There’s tons of ways to easily liquidate $800 in GC through regular spend or pre-paying accounts.

Don’t sweat the $16 you’d lose on a 2% credit card. It’s the cost of doing business with prepaid cards. You usually can’t withdraw cash from these at a bank or ATM. Just use them for spend.

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What a coincidence. Here’s a great way to buy money with gift cards that someone just posted on THIS forum!

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