Bye Bye TD Buxx, Bye Bye Walmart.com

The days of manufacturing spend with TD Buxx are limited. Luckly, there are still two other Buxx products for us to use.

There was also a change in purchasing Visa gift cards on Walmart.com.

TD Buxx

There are three versions of Buxx which are used in the mile-and-points community: US Bank Buxx, Nationwide Bank Buxx and TD Bank Buxx. The TD version is the most profitable since it lets you load at least $3000 a month for a token fee of $1. The others are more expensive and have lower limits. On the other hand, TD Buxx is limited geographically. All Buxx products can be loaded with a credit card. Visa or Mastercard, no Amex. See more details on on this Flyertalk wiki. All Buxx products come with PIN’s and can be unloaded by buying money orders at Walmart.

The word is out  that as of September 3, TD will only allow Buxx loads from TD Bank debit or credit cards, effectively killing the product. There could still be a possibility of earning points on a TD Bank credit card, but they’ll probably code it not to earn points.

Alas, all good things must come to an end.

I am in the geographic area of TD, and I got the TD Buxx not long ago. Sad to see it go so quickly. I don’t have the other two Buxx products, but I’m considering getting them now. The Nationwide Buxx is still publicly available (link), but US Buxx stopped taking new applications. FrugalHack gives us a link to a hidden sign-up page (link); I haven’t tried it yet to see if it’s still working, but it looks good. [UPDATE: dead]

Walmart.com

Walmart.com is a decent site for shopping, but since I visit physical-Walmart fairly often (Hmm, I wonder why?), I don’t have much use for the site. It’s main use to me has always been the fact that we were able to buy $200 Visa gift cards using a Walmart gift card. This effectively made a Walmart gift card valued almost as cash. Some reward programs need to be cashed out as gift cards, and Walmart was always my choice. In Walmart stores the system is hard-coded not to allow the purchase of Visa gift cards with a Walmart gift card, but the website allowed it. (I’ve heard that you can purchase a $500 Visa gc at a Walmart store with a credit card, but I never tried it.)

At some point in the past six months (I’m unsure exactly when), Walmart hard-coded their website not to allow the purhase of Visa/MC/Amex gift cards with Walmart gift cards. Walmart still allows purchasing a Walmart gift card with a Walmart gift card, so you can turn an e-gift card into a physical gift card and you can consolidate 4 gift cards into one.

Alas, all good things must come to an end.

Work-Around: Failure

I was wondering if an old work-around would work here: I once bought a Target e-gift card on raise.com, and I wanted to turn it into a physical Target gift card. Unlike Walmart, Target.com did not allow me to purchase a gift card with an e-gift card. The work-around is to purchase a small item (like a bottle of soap) together with the Target gift card, and then the system allowed me (a year ago) to pay for the whole purchase with a Target e-gift card. Make sure there is a small balance that the gift card doesn’t cover, then pay that balance with your Target RedCard, and you’ll get free shipping on the purchase. (You don’t need to pay the whole thing with your RedCard to get free shipping.)

I tried this with Walmart.com. I added some items to my cart together with the Visa gc. Didn’t work. (Sigh).