Earlier today, a couple of blogs reported on the possibility of buying $1,000 Visa Gift Cards at Simon Malls. However, we reached out to our contacts at Simon Corporate and confirmed with the Gift Card Management Team that the information posted is inaccurate.
As per Simon Corporate, sales to customers who are MSing MUST be done as “personal” sales and the maximum denomination is $500 “in accordance with federal regulations”. We have been told that MS’ers may not purchase on mall as a corporate customer. On the other hand, MSer’s are eligible for all on mall consumer promotions, including the current promo of $1 off the purchase fee.
While Simon has long maintained a corporate gift card purchasing program with different limits, reports of opening up larger gift card denominations to MSers are inaccurate according to Simon’s corporate team.
For everything you need to know about buying Simon gift cards, see these recent posts:
- Simom says (again) MS is great and they’re willing to help
- Did Amex just drop the bomb on Simon purchases?
- Simon Mall Visa Gift Cards $1 off June 10-30, 2019
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what happened to your contact at Simon Mall? I thought they are not selling 1k VGCs?
Yet there are reports of emails from SM that they will be selling 1k VGCs soon.
You say Simon Mall values our community and wants to keep us informed. If that’s really true, why are they always so opaque about why they restrict MS to personal accounts, never specifying which ‘”federal regulations” are behind that decision. The way they constantly avoid answering that question, coupled with the lack of any federal regulations which could reasonably be interpreted as prohibiting them from selling to us through the corporate program, indicates that Simon *could* allow it, but they don’t *want to* allow it, and they’re misleading the public by claiming otherwise.
No idea if this is really the case, but I imagine that there are risk points – both in terms of financial risk and in terms of pressure or attention from the govt in regard to laundering risk, that lead many institutions to create limits. Every business sets a risk ceiling somewhere. I’m not aware of anywhere else where you can buy as much as $25K in one shot nor that offers to get all that set up for you in advance if you call ahead and tells you to write MS as the reason you’re buying. Seems pretty friendly and welcoming to me. Certainly so when compared to my local supermarket, which limits customers to $50 on a CC with no explanation or reason whatsoever. I don’t know what federal regulations are at play, either – but surely the underlying reasons are sufficiently complex that it’s easier to come up with a two-word phrase than it is to get into the reasons and it’s probably not worth it to them to argue their rationale or reasons rather than use “federal regulations” as the reason (note that plenty of other stores cite the same with various seemingly arbitrary limits). At the end of the day, like you said, for whatever reason they don’t want to. I’d love for them to reconsider that, but I’d say that considering them MS-unfriendly would be missing the forest for the trees.
Would I like it if they’d sell $10K cards? Of course. But I also understand that there’s going to be a limit somewhere. I’d love to see that limit as high as possible. From what Simon is saying, that number for them is $500 cards in a respectable quantity.
Thank you, Nick, for your thoughtful reply. I agree with you on the big picture; I think Simon Mall is a great place for MS, and I visit their locations almost every week. And I agree, every business has a right to choose which policies to follow, which risks to avoid, etc. When it comes to the $1,000 cards and corporate purchasing accounts, my complaint with Simon is how they try to pass the blame and pretend it’s not their decision, rather than just being forthright. The truth is, there is no regulation prohibiting them from selling us $1,000 gcs through a corporate account, but for whatever reason, they choose not to do it (and they obviously have no obligation to provide that service to us). But instead of just saying that, they obfuscate the truth and imply they aren’t allowed to do it. They don’t have to tell us any reason at all, but it bothers me when they give misleading answers and pretend to be on our side. Sure, they’re better than a lot of other businesses that make up ridiculous and irrational limits on MS, but the fact that Simon is better than others doesn’t make them infallible.
Bottom line, I think Simon has a valuable, symbiotic relationship with MS. But they try to act like they’re 100% in our corner, doing everything in their power to assist us, rather than admit the reality that they’re a business and they don’t really care about what’s best for MS unless that aligns with what’s most profitable for Simon.
[…] 6/21/19: Simon Mall corporate has debunked this report. There are no plans to expand $1000 Visa gift cards to non-corporate […]
Was so skeptical of the initial news that this doesn’t really come as a surprise. Thanks for investigating and confirming what most probably thought was too good to be true. Good to see solid reporting having it’s due. Thanks.
“solid reporting” hahaha.
Maybe you should nominate them for a news Emmy for investigative reporting.
Don’t worry — I’ll thank you in my acceptance speech, Leo :-).
“in accordance with federal regulations”
Hahahahaha
Congrats on killing another one! You found a way to abort this one before it even went life. But hey, ya scooped all the other blogs with it! Woohoo!
Simon has been very clear that they’re happy with MSers and they’ve actively reached out to us to keep the community informed. No effort to scoop anybody here — they’ve just been very forthcoming with info and welcoming to our community, so we went straight to the horse’s mouth.
Any updates on whether they might ever start selling money orders? Because while $1000 cards would’ve been nice, a place to get money orders that actually welcomes our business would be amazing!
They’ve been clear that they are not going to be selling money orders.
[…] 6/21/19: Frequentmiler reports hearing from Simon corporate that this information is inaccurate, and it’s NOT […]