Simon Mall Makes Positive Change for Gift Card Buyers
Simon Mall is a popular source for gift cards. They make things easier as they now let you order online, have high limits, and they have large denominations such as $1,000 Visa gift cards. Simon Mall has become even more popular now that Gift Card Mall has limited their portal payouts.
But Simon Mall purchases have also raised red flags and have caused shut downs of credit card accounts. Mark wrote about several data points of Citi shutting down accounts possibly because of Simon Mall online orders. With the low fees involved in buying these gift cards, Citi DoubleCash is a popular choice. As you know that cashback can now be converted to ThankYou points if you have a premium Citi card.
Now Simon Mall has made a small change that seems to be a friendly move for gift card buyers. Whether intentional or not, Simon Mall gift card purchases are now coding differently. Instead of “SIMON GC”, it now codes as “SIMON MALL HO”. You can see the images below, provided by Travel on Points, which show receipts from August 5th and then September 28th.
Simon mall has changed there coding. Friendly move especially after some reported shutdowns! @milestomemories @dannydealguru @Drofcredit @FrequentMiler pic.twitter.com/hxl2GpS33T
— Travel on Point(s) (@TravelOnPoints1) October 7, 2020
Conclusion
Simon Mall has been a friendly gift card source, with reasonable fees. This latest change, coming after reported shutdowns, could be yet another helping hand for gift card buyers.
Let us know if you have been affected by similar shutdowns!
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Not worth it. ALL of my Citibank and Chase cards were closed after heavy MS’ing buying these cards. I probably overdid it buying $10k per week for a few months but still not worth it as you can’t fight them on it. They just close all of them down suddenly so I’d think twice about messing around with Citibank or Chase cards.
I assume this involved regular and repeated cycling?
Great news. Now they just need to change the coding to a useful bonus category.
I think the CC controls the coding, not the business.
Merchant selects MCC but can have problems with their processor if it doesn’t represent their actual business
Not because of points issues, but because interchange fees vary by MCC and are supposed to reflect an associated level of risk
It’s coding as retail which is 3x on some cards 😉
Which CCs are these?