GoBank Shutdowns Begin

Note: for background to this post, check out my posts tagged "gobank", especially  "Does GoBank have a monthly swipe reload limit?" "GoBank Customer Care Calls the Free-quent Flyer," and "GoBank Calls Again."

This is very much a developing situation, but according to a number of posts on this FlyerTalk thread (starting towards the bottom of this page), we are starting to see the first GoBank account shutdowns. I want to give my very rough impressions of the situation so far, very subject to ongoing updates:

  • Shutdowns appear to be based on statement closing dates. As I reported in this post, I received my second call, the one from GoBank's fraud department threatening me with account closure, shortly after my June statement closed (showing $17,000 in swipe reloads).
  • All the reports of shutdowns have been for total monthly load volume exceeding $10,000.
  • People have been shut down who mixed in "regular" spending on the cards: restaurants, grocery stores, etc. So shutdowns appear to be based principally on Walmart swipe load volume.

I highly value the ability to unload my Nationwide and US Bank Visa Buxx cards for free using Gobank, so I've scaled back my Walmart swipe reloads to slightly less than $5,000 per month: $3,000 in Visa Buxx loads and roughly $2,000 in MyVanilla Debit Card and Alaska Airlines Debit Card loads. This allows me to still load a full $5,000 per month in Vanilla Reload Network reload cards to my American Express Bluebird card, and requires just 2 trips per month to Walmart.

That's the level I'm comfortable with, and I hope it keeps me out of GoBank's crosshairs for a little while longer.  Share your experiences in the comments: what load volume are you comfortable with going forward?