Is this store specific? They are full price at my local store

Reading the T&Cs I would think that the 20% extra is just pre auth charge as it is to cover the potential of a 20% service charge being added to the bill later. I would think it will be released back to the card after a day or so.

Sounds like a American thing, where they swipe you card and then the come over with the receipt to then you add the extra tip on the receipt (and also we never tip 20% in the UK!). It always seems a big dodgy to me in the US, but all the restaurant do it, and update the how much they charge the card after you leave the restaurant based on what you wrote on the receipt. Seems highly open to abuse!

Bought 5 with my credit card then went back a bit later and tried to buy some using the others :wink: it was the same woman who served me and she got a bit funny and called her supervisor... After one girl said no and I queried why not? She called someone else. He came over and asked what i was trying to do? (All the while the cashier saying he's already spent hundreds on them) He knew what but didn't understand why... So I just straight up told him they were 15℅ off and he said oh OK. Put it through. :grin: now I need to see if I can pay my MasterCard with these to make the ultimate loop.

Bought 5 cards and Revolut have blocked me from topping up using them! :P anybody got a good way to extract the funds?

Share the T&C's.

Use it to credit your mobile phone account. Simple.

I just bought one from Wilko's then went to Burger King and spent £4. Went back into Wilko's to buy another one with my £46 balance thinking I'd had a free lunch.
However. In restaurants the vanilla card charge an extra 20% for some reason so the transaction in Wilko's failed.

I rang rang them up fuming but evidently it's in the terms and conditions.
The terms and and conditions inside the pack that you can't read until you've bought the pack.

Im good on the phone when arguing but didn't get anywhere. I even hung up and redialled but the next person told me the same thing.

I purchased one of these Vanilla cards a few hours ago, loaded it to my Revolut account, then transfered out to my bank account.
Is the limit you're referring to due to the £200per annum limit, or just a general rule on prepaid cards?

However at least first 3 went on and stayed there. There is no fee as it registers as a mastercard debit

My revolut account is finally unlocked. They have not refunded the 3 cards that sucessfully went through however they have said not allowed any more pre paid cards (their terms do state no pre paid cards accepted)

Shhhhh. It was actually a beer

I guess the important question is, how much did you pay for the water?

Just as an update. I bought one from Wilko's 5 mins ago. Went straight into Sainsbury's and bought a bottle of water as a test. I used the self serve to had to call the staff member over to confirm the signature but all was good.

I didnt go online online and register.

They work straight out of the packet.

It doesn't look like there is a way without some fees. Looks like Revolut is 1% but people's accounts get locked after a fee cards. Paypal is the usual around 3% fee.

Do you actually have to go through the registration process, or do these work straight away without registering

whats the best way to transfer the amount back to bank account without fees, or paypal sounds good but surely there are fees?

Not a bad idea but you will end up with lots of cards with £4.14 on them, which might be a bit of a pain to use up. Although it is free money. You might also get an awkward CS person who doesn't like what you are doing as it will look strange....

Has anyone paid for fuel using these? Is it bettee to use the value all in one go or can bits be used at a time? (if using in-store)

not yet, they've passed me to another dept. 4 worked fine, it was just the 5th.. though I had another card on there so maybe the 6th? If they haven't unlocked it by tomorrow morning I will call them

Fees?

Did revolut unlock your account? I've done three top ups not sure if I should risk a 4th.

ran into this in one store.. had to threaten to call head office in front of them. They then allowed me to buy all 10 with my Amex card

Those who bought in bulk, it might be worth extracting from them asap to limit exposure to "Vanilla card"..

E.g. my local Morisson has decided not to accept "Vanilla" cards, unsure why and they couldn't tell me... They're quite happy to sell pre-paid cards themselves, as is Wilko. But when it comes to accepting them as payment, they have decided to stop accepting them....

Didn't have any problems on Revolut or Coop though, but still worth limiting exposure to a "Vanilla" failure.

I bought 37 of them

say again?!

I've swapped out of all 10 of my cards. Initial attempt to convert to Amazon failed, due to no address/verification and the website to register didn't work.

Managed to get 6x £50 gift cards from my local Morissons, all in separate transactions during yesterday and today. Now they've said they're no longer accepting "Vanilla" cards...
So I loaded one on to Revolut, and used that to buy a gift card from Morissons.

Then I went to the local coop, they didn't have any decent gift cards, so I got a 2 x £25's and used the Vanilla without any issues.
Final 3 I just topped up Revolut, and transferred cash out to my bank out... Deal is over for me. Hope you all benefited.

I use a similar one for work, when entering cardholder details I put in 'Mr Giftcard' (or words to that effect, whatever it says on the front). Can't comment on the address though as I know where the one I use is registered

Can this card be used online?

My local store were only willing to sell me 1. There seems to be no proper guidelines or information on the max amount you can buy and customer service weren't much help either

Anyone else have trouble buying more than 1?

Well played if the branches are not that far between but quite the effort then. :thumbsup: Not sure if they get new stocks everyday.

no, visited 6 branches. 1 branch didn't stock them, others had stock ranging from 4-10

All cards from one branch? :joy:

well that didn't take long, 5 appears to be the limit.. on chat to them now

Correct - cashing them in asap using revolut. Testing at what point do they go hold on a moment, that's enough cards for one person..!

Cashing them in of course. Easy profit if you got the capital to start with & can get them.

What u planning on doing with them or towards ?

Busy day - scooped up 40 in total

does Shell accept these? Might be worth saving a fiver on fuel

Ok, got the registration link working, anyone having the problem that it thinks its an invalid card?!

edit - confiriming balance on phone works at least. Its a s**t website though!

Anyone able to register their card?
ppssecure.myvanillagiftcard.com/cho…icv

Ends 12/10 and I don't get paid until the 13th... ahhhhhhhhhh

I think my Wilko also listed Pizza Hut cards as being part of the offer, although the fact no-one else has mentioned this is making me doubt myself...

Heat from me, thanks OP.

Exactly my thinking, so only really worth it if you can easily do x10 and get £40.
Can get 5x on each Wilko transaction. So should take a couple of minutes...

anyone use it to fill up with 50.00 of fuel yet?

Not if youre trying to reach a spend on an Amex card, to trigger a points bonus

Does the discount work on the cards with the picture of the glittery box on the cover or just the ones with a bow

to make £4 this is a lot of hassle

Can I go back into wilko and buy a gift cards with them ? ie amazon

None left in Cheltenham. I got the last 4.
Fantastic deal.
Used one of the four on revolut and it worked fine for top up. Just used my own address. No fee applied to top up either !!!
Think it might trip my account out if I used all 4.

Can I buy a Tesco gift card with it?

Yes, and when you received 150 points for a £50 gift card purchase and 1.25% from a credit card, it didn't seem retarded at all, far from it. Many a free restaurant meal and more to come from basically free Tesco points.
10p? What 10p?
Snooze and you lose.

But when you can use it to buy a holiday for threse times the value or double up on electric purchases in store (gone now) it all of a sudden doesn't seem so retarded :kissing_heart:

great for manufacture spending if you need to hit a credit card bonus miles/points, etc.

To those saying it's not at their local store, it should be.. It is on their website, but not all stores have the banner up on the display.
On the Tills, it originally scans at £53.95, but then it subtracts the reduction at the end of the transaction or just prior to the next item being added if you have multiple items.

Seems to be national. No banners up in local but when scanned on their PC it showed the 15% discount. Would also only allow me to buy 5, so will be going back later. Presume it will work on the £25 cards too

Offer ends 12/10 though!

I've used these before to make one off payments to BT or Virgin Media. They just add it as a credit to your account.

Rotherham Parkgate doesn't have it either

Got this working in Southampton, staff didnt know but supervisor totalted the transaction and it came up at the correct price. Added them to revolut and into bank account.

Money doesnt come off at my local Wilko

St Albans store doesn't have this promotion :unamused:

This is not money laundering.

Money laundering is trying to make illegally earned(dirty) money appear legally earned(clean).

Nothing here is illegal.

Yes, when I went to Top Up -> Card in Revolut, second page asks for the address.. Given there is no address, I gave up. As I have a £1 pending authorisation from the failed Amazon top up I'm waiting to expire so don't want to damage any more cards with failed attempts.

My revolut account allowed me to add 2 cards now it is locked. Be careful as it asks for verfifcation trom bank statement (not possible obviously)

Deffo Argos ? Might buy 4 for xbox one s deal
so anyone done it at Argos Sheffield ?
so it’s £3.95 on every £50 not 4 and 1 £3.95 ?

Can you top up Revolut without registering the cards first? Is no address verification required for that transaction, as that's the reason it failed with Amazon..

Yes packaging isn’t good!

Little update after buying 7.
AMEX don't accept them for bill payments, can't top up Monzo with them. Have resorted to using PayPal Gift, lost £1.85 per card, still about £2 profit per card and gets me Membership rewards as well as putting me closer to the Amex spending incentive. Thanks OP :smile:
PS the packaging on these cards is bloody awful! :poop:

You sure?

Yes works with Revolut, I’ve just bought loads :joy: no fee

So what the hell is this?

I bet you could top up your revolut card with them, for a 1% fee so about 46p which you can then transfer to your bank account for free.

Instore is fine

Able to use the card at Argos instore (or online) without hassle?

Ok so Amex don’t accept them.. hmm

Council tax 1.46% handling fee takes the shine off a bit. Might be best to buy a few grands worth of FX prime lenses from warehouse deals next time the 20% discount deal is on and bang em on ebay for a small profit.

Anyone found a way to quickly extract the money from these other than council tax? Do amex accept them? Heading off shortly to clear my locals shelves

Does anyone know the cost to transfer one vanilla card balance to another

Or would a paypal card reader work (3.5% fee?)

Yep - my council take them online but it's long winded (their website is worse than Vanquis').

Council tax bill is small and spread over several months.

This has just realised the best part of £40 profit in less than 30 minutes.

You could even buy them on the same card you're paying off....useful for anyone with a high limit where these are accepted. £2k at 56 days interest free doesn't really make it anymore worthwhile than just paying with cash!

I think there is a fee to send a gift payment to another account now. It's what I used to do until they cottoned on.

Im pretty sure you can pay chunks of Your council tax over the phone with these cards and use the saved money to pay your credit card :thumbsup:

Given my credit history I won't have Amex for another 4 years :P

Capital One & Aqua reject it. But they work to pay my Vanquis card. Just done 7. So worth logging in individually and checking - assuming it depends on the payment processor.

11% instant ROI for me as they won't be taking the direct debit this month (payments take 3 days to show but I'm cancelling the DD)

Tempted to get a hat full and put the Vanquis into credit and take it out at the cash machine - no interest as the card is in credit but £3 cash handling fee per withdrawal - they get funny if they catch you though. Aqua went mental when I did it abroad, blocked my card, threatened to close it etc etc.

There are obviously degrees of taking the michael.... they determined I'd pushed it a little too far!

Well the interesting thing with these "Vanilla" cards is that they are MasterCard and not Visa like all the other prepaid gift cards (which are also useful). When signing up to some things credit checks aren't carried out and some places they are carried out. Make sure you leave £1 credit on your card. Is it a good idea to register them? I don't know. Just a few ideas for you.

A word of warning with these prepaid cards and these "Vanilla" in particular. They don't like you logging in to see what credit you have left in the hope you can't check and they get to keep your money. Their login doesn't like iPad it fails to recognise date of birth. Login on windows is ok. If after spending you have a bit left on the card you can top up your Amazon account (min £1) to zero out your card.

Maybe these are good for ZEEK will have to check later.

You could use these to buy gift cards from other stores that have an offer on gift cards like when Tesco have 20% off iTunes, pizza express etc. Would make great XMAS gifts too

ohhh :disappointed: Thanks anyway for trying. Any idea if you can pay credit card bills with a prepaid card? I can pay my Amex bill with Monzo but not tried one of these cards. I would expect so as it's basically the same as the monzo?

The simplest transaction is to see this as an opportunity to make a ~10% saving if you're just about to buy a costly item from Evans or Currys/PcWorld that Wilko also sell vouchers for..

If you're buying a £500 laptop from PcWorld. Buy 10 of these cards from Wilko, all on the same transaction so won't take long. Total cost will be £458.60 on a single receipt.

Then open the packets, and use them to buy 10 x £50 PcWorld gift cards from Wilko. This bit could take longer, as they may have to go as individual transactions. But the cashier will be familiar with the process by the time you finish, even if they are not when you start!

Then go to PcWorld and buy your £500 laptop with the PcWorld gift cards bought from Wilko... A quick £40 saving on your new Laptop!

No - just tried to double check, and says card is not supported :disappointed:

Prepaid to prepaid is high risk so card issuers usually block it. Can't link it with Curve either

Can be bought with a credit card, or any card Wilko normally accept (so other gift cards/love2shop etc).

Not seen as a cash advance because Wilko don't pass what you are buying to your card issuer. Card issuer just sees it as Wilko - so you could be buying an expensive lunch or lot of kitchen utilities for all they know.

I got them on my credit card. Sadly I can't use them to then pay off said credit card (worth a shot). Seem to be registering ok in PayPal. Might use them for my council tax too, assuming they're accepted.

I can't imagine they'll work for petrol using pay at pump, but might try at the kiosk and see what happens.

Wilko staff looked a bit amazed at how many I got - our local had so many on the hanger they were falling off. Usually they only ever have 4 or 5 of anything!!

They do take a good 20 seconds a card to go through the till though as previously mentioned!

Can confirm inactivity fee is £2 a month after 6 months of non-use. So assuming you can find somewhere that will take them (Tesco self checkouts but you have to wait for staff to come over and validate your signature... not that mine ever check properly!!) to buy something small every 5 months, you shouldn't get charged.

Can I top up Monzo card with this?

No, changed name to pay.com and swiftly went bust after that.

For the sake of making 10 pence worth of club card points? That’s retarded

There are some cool things you can do with these cards but you can find that out for yourselves :kissing_heart:

Check to see if you can pay it into PayPal and then into your account.

Do they offer student discount?

Can you easily use more than one of these cards in a single transaction ie game Argos for ps4 or xbox with black Friday round the corner would make these a no brainer ???

If you find a shop which will allow you to use the swipe system your lucky.
Most shops don't allow them due to how easily they can be copied, and also with advent of chip and pin, in some shops they don't instantly authorise the transaction.

so you could have £1 on your card use it for a purchase of x amount and the shop would just authorise it to process the transaction later on.

As they're sold by Wilko, I'd assume they'd also be accepted by Wilko as payment.

So they could then be used to buy any other Gift card. A wide selection of shops, Amazon, etc were on offer if you want to then "get out" of the Vanilla Mastercard due to difficulty using them elsewhere.

Will this work at a self service petrol station ?

Are these basically the same as the cards you get from bt/ee for signing up?

If you intend getting one of these to then transfer the money elsewhere, and you know it will work, then fine, go for it, but if you intend to just use it in-store for shopping, instead of your normal card, don't bother, because its hit and miss whether it will be accepted or not.
I got one back in the summer when Sainsburys were doing a similar offer. It was accepted in Morrisons, but refused in Tesco, accepted in Asda but then refused in Home Bargains.
It was initially accepted in Toolstation, but when I went back the next week to buy something else it was refused.
On each occasion I swiped it down the slot on the side of the reader because I knew it had no pin, so that wasn't the issue.
It was more hassle than the small saving was worth and I was glad to get rid of it, but obviously it does work for some people in certain situations so I haven't voted either way.
Just don't expect to be able to use this everywhere like a normal credit card, because you can't.

So can you use a card to buy a card? And just pay the initial 3.95 once?

nice deal plonki

Why is the initial charge for the £50 card £53.95???

Nice find, I'll bet the guy who cleared the shelves of bananas at Tesco a few years ago will already be on the case.

(£1 bananas got £1.10 worth of Tesco points; he took a trailer to the supermarket with him, then gave the bananas away in the city centre).

Could this be spent on Argos, Amazon etc?
Got a few toys I need to buy for Xmas.

This is basically free money which is amazing! But the £3.95 fee Mastercard charge for buying one of these is disgusting.

Seems like a lot of effort

It is more difficult (not impossible) to use Online, as it has no name on it and doesn't have any address registered which is used during processing / authorisation. When I tried to register it on the website printed on the back of the card, the website didn't work..
However, I used it in a supermarket by swiping on the side of the chip & pin machine, and there were no problems. You are asked to sign, like before the times of chip&pin.
Calling the 0333 number and entering the card number gives the Balance as £50.

Seems too good to be true? Buy one, use it to buy another and then another and then another...