Yesterday the manufactured spending world was rocked by the news that the great majority of Bluebird and Serve users were shut down by American Express.
Reports flooded in across several channels of people receiving emails letting them know that they got the proverbial BAN HAMMER!
To American Express’s credit, it was not an immediate shutdown (where you would forfeit any money that you had in your account), but instead they just indicated that you would no longer be able to LOAD any money to your Bluebird or Serve account. Since that was what most travel hackers were using Bluebird and Serve for, this essentially means that it’s just about worthless.
For whatever reason, I did NOT get the email and it appears (at least for now) that my account is still open and in good condition.
It’s interesting to note that Serve recently changed their terms / conditions to specifically say “manufactured spending” was against the terms.
We, in our sole discretion, may limit your use of, suspend or terminate your privileges with respect to, your Account…when you structure purchases or conduct transactions with your Account, Family Account, SetAside Account and/or Card to manufacture spend,
Why to keep your Bluebird / Serve account open?
Even if your card was shutdown, there may be some reasons to keep your account open. First of all, of course you’ll need time to transfer your money out, and it’s probably worth at least letting the final statement close.
Running with Miles makes another good point – it may be worth keeping the card open for access to Amex Offers. Of course if you take all your money out, and can’t add more, you can’t really buy anything with an Amex Offer!
Or maybe close it right away?
Another option might be to close it right away (or soon), and then try to apply for a new card? I have a One VIP Serve card and my wife’s variety is still a Target RedCard (haven’t switched it back over after the shutdown of debit card loads at Target – like I said, I’m not a huge MSer).
If she were to close her Redbird and open up a Serve card, would it get shut down immediately? Or if she did some MSing on it – how long would it take? I’d imagine somebody that got a shutdown email yesterday has probably already closed their account and opened up another one – it will be interesting to see how American Express handles that.
Finding a pattern to whose accounts got shut down
As I mentioned, my Serve One VIP account did NOT get shut down, but I’m not really sure why. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, here were some factors about my account that might be different from the average travel hacker’s account
- I don’t use it super frequently (I don’t think I ever max out my account monthly)
- My account is fairly new (I re-opened it in November)
- I’ve been loading $200 and $100 cards rather than $500
- I only have one account
- I also am not super vigilant about clearing out my balance (for instance, I currently have $2900 in the account that’s been there for awhile)
- I also have not done any online loading
I’ve tried to look through some of the comments of various posts to see if a pattern has emerged. There’s this Frequent Miler post as well as the comments on my post yesterday among others.
One redditor suggested it was only new accounts that remained open. Has anyone with an account opened since October / November been shut down? There have been also definitely reports of people with older accounts that have not been shut down.
Another suggestion is this has nothing to do with MSers but is more a clampdown initiated by the federal government to tighten things up to stop money launderers.
But now what?
So if your account has been shut down, now what? There are still a few options, but none quite as easy as buying gift cards and loading them to serve. I enjoyed Mommy Points’s take – Earning Miles in a Post-Bluebird World. I have been spending a bit of time reselling products, as well as buying gift cards to resell. If you’re still looking to liquidate gift cards, there are still some stores that will allow you to buy money orders with PIN-enabled debit cards, though I would tread carefully there, as banks have been known to shut down people who deposit lots of money orders. Remember – don’t poop where you eat! If you going to be depositing lots of money orders, I’d set up a bank account separate from your “real” life account at a minimum.
What are your plans in a post-Bluebird / Serve world?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
opened 2 serve one vip accounts in November, maxed out or came close to $5k limit each month for both and both remain open and unaffected
That seems to jive with some of the reports that I’ve been seeing about new accounts. The interesting thing will be if these accounts get shut down later on
I closed target red card in November and opened the one VIP in early November. I loaded with 5k of gift card for November and 5k for December. I never received the email about the shut down.
My email that I received was actually in with my spam
My family has a total of 5 BB/Serve accounts, all opened at the same time, and have same pattern of usage: maxed out 5k a month and use it to pay off cc’s. However, only 3 accounts with the same address are shut down, but the other 2 at a different address are still active. Is Amex targeting multiple accounts in the same address? Does anyone experience my situation?
Looking at all the data points shared across the internet it pretty clear they did a great job identifying the MSers (not that it would be all that hard) when they created their ban list in the October timeframe. The two big questions now are is this a one time event (doubt it), quarterly?, yearly? And what can we do to stay under the radar if there is a next time?
Mike, I think you and Dan are giving Amex way too much “credit” here. They did a great job, you say in nailing accounts with ms.
They also apparently slammed accounts engaged in activity that I don’t understand how it’s branded as manufactured spending. In my wife’s serve account, she’s used it for nothing but paying legitimate bills….. (monthly mortgage, energy & utility bills)
But she got shut down too. She should have passed muster even under the secretly changed Terms & Conditions of a few days ago.
But you and Dan want to be nice to Amex…. Dan, if I didn’t know better,…..
I bet she maxed our her CC loads every month. While I agree that is within the rules, so is $5k on Kate. Just because your bills are ‘legitimate’ doesn’t mean you are abusing (in AMEX eyes) the service. Where do you draw the line? I’m guessing its some combo of minimal CC and Kate reloads but I don’t think we will ever know for sure.
Well, I have had a BB card shut down. I used the card as a checking account to pay my bills. I have never done any MS ever. In fact, I don’t have any credit cards that I have points on. I have never used gift cards.(Yes, never used them in my life.) All loads were from my bank Chase and BOA debit cards at Walmart. Why was I shut down?
It has nothing to do with MS. Or they killed my account for using it within the terms, because of everyone else using it for MS.
Havent used my BB in 5 months…loaded $2K (4x$500 VGC) last week, wrote a check for my rent, paid the remaining back to the credit card, and I was shut down.
My family has 2 BB opened 3 years old, same address, max out every month and patterned. I didn’t get the email/notice yet. I have both BB with direct deposit from work. Another reason not being shut down?
Haven’t used Bluebird in almost 2 years. But it has about 14K in MS from the good old days of Vanilla Reload and CVS. I’d like to dust it off and use it sparingly at KATE with my Staples VGCs. Think $800 a month is too much?
2/3 Serve cards were shutdown. One was an old Serve that never was changed to redbird. The other was a OneVIP converted after the death of redbird. Used primarily for MS. Not maxed out monthly. Though, this is the second month I loaded my Fidelity Amex card. I loaded between $200-700 at a time. The last one is one that was more recently opened in the last couple months. Not a ton of activity on it. Thankfully, I didn’t load anything on it this month. I’m just loading $100/200 gift cards right now.
I agree I think you were not shut down because you opened your Serve more recently. I opened my Serve October 23 and was shut down. Fortunately had liquidated all my gift cards so not stuck with any. I might open a Serve for my mom and do some more MS until they shut her down too or Serve ends for MS completely.
This is a great data point, it the latest open date I’ve seen to be closed. I assume you hit the ground running and were able to max out your loads for Oct (and beyond?)
anyone got serve shut down without doing any bill pay?
Billpay seems to be a common denominator that I’m seeing in comments on multiple blogs. I had two accounts, similar use, but the one that did billpay was closed. Other account with no billpay is open. I only paid legit bills and never loaded with gift cards.
That’s so weird. I thought they WANTED us to use for bill pay. I did so just to make amex happy. It was much easier to just move te money to my bank account. I’m really confused about who did and did not get shuttle down. And, I have read most of the blog comments and cannot find a single pattern that holds up.
Basically, if you are NOT loading Visa GC then you wouldn’t be shut down. Do normal as regular banking usage, direct deposit from work salary into BB or Serve, then pay bills.
Sorry to burst that theory but I have NEVER EVER loaded w/ a gift card and I was shut down.
Then you are the victim of mass shut down. You should’ve called BB or Serve to complain. Most of shut down due to loading VISA gift cards and I guess AmEx consider it as MS [amex added this term into T&C].
about gift card re-selling, you done any of that lately? Noticed how nearly all the gift cards that had been so discounted 20% or more via Amazon, Kroger, Staples, Sears, ebay and various giftcard outlets are now VERY hard to sell at break even via raise.com etc. (even if you manage to get a “bulk seller” commission rates)
Anybody seen any serious gift card discounts lately?
Appears to me in watching the raise.com “trading” that there’s some serious manipulation players now at work — as the big boy consolidators are now infecting a low volume market….
I’m now quite suspicious of the entire gift card re-selling game — and I suspect it’s about to get even worse with thousands of bluebird & serve exiles following Susan et. al. off a cliff here — thinking this is a new road to nirvana.
Maybe I’m too jaundiced — and the present depressed giftcard market may be “normal” post holiday funk. Correctives welcome
I’ve definitely noticed that gift card selling prices have gone down. I’m waiting it out – I have a bunch of gift cards that I’m holding on to waiting for prices to come back up
Well Dan, if you and other friends continue to be able to use your serve/bluebirds as we (at least my crew) did before (racking up miles & CUR points while paying real bills), then perhaps you might wish to entitle your next thread,
“Survivors’ Guilt” 🙂
Live long & Prosper.
I’ll shed a tear for you each time I see Kate 😛