I’m in Alberta and I haven’t seen them. But I don’t have a Visa, maybe it’s just Visa who does it here?
If I started getting them I’d be VERY pissed.
Nah, MasterCard, Amex, the whole nine yards. Probably depends on the bank you have your card with.
I hate these things. I’ve asked my credit card companies to stop sending them, but they persist. One thing I’ve noticed - at least my Discover checks require calling a phone number to activate the checks, but that security measure seems flimsy to me. I guess it’s better than nothing.
Before I canceled one of my credit cards, the evil bastard in me fantasized about some sort of a kiting scheme between two credit cards that were unrelenting with the checks. Personally, I hope some poor, desperate bastard pulls such a thing off and gives the credit card companies a compelling deterrent to continuing the practice. This is a security risk, plain and simple, activation number or not.
Oh yes, but so is sending out preapproved credit cards to every Tom, Dick and Harry in the country, despite Tom being in a persistent vegetative state for ten years, Dick being four years old and Harry being a goldfish.
The lure of sweet sweet lucre will keep them doing it until the Evil Gubmint™(R) orders them to quit that shit.
Those cheques go in my compost bin. The worms seem to like them.
Since I don’t have an actual personal credit card*, and my credit rating is “aaahhh! run away!!!”, I don’t seem to get these cheques. Are they coming to people who already have credit cards, from the issuers of those credit cards?
[sub]*I carry a corporate AmEx that belongs to the company I work for, and I have a personal prepaid Mastercard that I load up when I want to buy something.[/sub]
One of our local assistant DA’s had his billing address changed from Texas to Brooklyn online by identity thieves who used the cash advance checks to max out his card. Had a hell of a time trying to convince them it wasn’t him.
Yeah. Convenient way for them to get you to charge up your card. “Oh, yeah! I forgot I have a credit card! That’s how I’ll pay my rent!”
It definitely depends on the bank. I have two MasterCards, one with Bank Of Montreal and one with MBNA Canada. I get cheques with my statement, and sometimes just by themselves from the MBNA card, but never from the BMO one. I haven’t tried calling MBNA to ask them to cut it out, but I suspect it would be a big hassle. I think I’ll probably just cancel the card, I rarely use it anyway.
Well, there’s the reason. MBNA is evil, but BMO is a respectable bank.
Not denying that MBNA is evil (their cheques are the only ones that have a $7.50 fee on top of the interest they charge, something that they mention in small print), but RBC, which is just as respectable as BMO, sends them all the time.
I bank with RBC, and have never gotten tham. But then I don’t have a credit card with them.
I’m not sure you’re getting the concept. 
These are cheques that are drawn on a credit card that you already have. No credit card, no cheque.
I get them from BMO a couple of times a year. They go into the classified documents shredder at work.
My mother has done that. She’s paid her mortgage with one of those checks to get the points, then she just pays the bill off when it’s due.
Robin
But don’t the cheques count as a cash advance, with the attendant fees? (Typically between 1.5% and 2.5%, in my experience, and/or a higher rate of interest on the balance if you weren’t to pay it off right away.) Seems like an expensive way of getting points.
Especially when you consider that cash advances don’t give you points. Otherwise, I’d take out $10k in cash advances and pay them back the next day, until I had enough points for a trip to Brazil.
I was thinking of smugly posting that they don’t seem to have arrived here yet.
Instead I’ll ask if you’re prepared to say what bank sent them to you?
I used to get sent them by MBNA, if that’s any help. My advice is just to avoid MBNA, trying to get rid of them is like trying to get dog poo out of a rug. It took me ten minutes to persuade one of their reps to cancel my card, despite it not having been used in two years. You’d think they’d be glad to get rid of a zero biller, but no.