Since 2020, I've been using these Vanilla gift cards to make purchases online but around 2022 is when I have been noticing how unreliable they are starting to get.
It all started with eBay, out of nowhere my payments get blocked. I couldn't but things I had the money for so I would try to use a loophole (e.g. Pay with PayPal using the card).
In this blog I'll go over the notable times when Vanilla betrayed me! An important thing to note is that most of the cards are Visa and the latest one I got was MasterCard.
I'm not sure when I first noticed that it was blocked on eBay but I remember seeing a support forum talking about how eBay banned gift cards. This was a surprise to me since it already worked so many times, I ended up going to Mercari...which did not turn out so well.
With my latest MasterCard, it had also blocked me from Mercari. I don't know how these things operate but they sure are hell to actually use. Though they did work on some lesser known sites like eStarland and the Dead Zebra Shop, here is why!
eStarland has worked with both Visa and MasterCard because I was told it "doesn't save the card on their systems". Yes, I called VanillGift support and asked them why purchases kept getting blocked and got a response somewhat like that.
As you've probably seen already I like Bugdroid merchandise, and I often buy from Dead Zebra and once the Google Merch Store. Unfortunately, the Google Merch Store doesn't have a loophole...
But Dead Zebra does! Around 2021 I saw that the gift cards were blocked so I tried something new. PayPal (at the time) let you add prepaid gift cards to your wallet, and then let you pay for things. So I added the gift card to PayPal and then used the Pay with PayPal buttons, the same thing worked on Steam!
Sadly, this loophole also got fixed when gift cards were getting blocked from being used on PayPal. So...
Loophole time again! Ironically Vanilla can't pay for things on Amazon but it can be added to the Amazon Wallet which was useful for Dead Zebra. I don't remember when but one time when I was getting a figurine I found out that I could bypass the block with Amazon Pay, I was so happy when I found out.
Recently, I paid for some Steam games with my MasterCard as well but that is not all.
Prepaid gift cards aren't allowed with domain registrars most of the time so whenever I had to buy them I had to ask my mom to directly pay for my domains. Then last night (3/24) I was searching for a shorter domain for Droid Pack and tried to buy it with my new MasterCard, I don't know how it worked but it did!
(I don't know exactly what to put here so I'll just say) right now I only have 3 months until I turn 18, so that is when I'll get my own debit card and be free from the mess that is Vanilla.
P.S. Droid Pack will soon be moving from droid.gemdation.com to bugdroid.org! Shoutout to that project in general because it is what caused this blog to be written.