You’ve probably heard or experienced yourself by now the fact that Redbirds have been pretty useless since yesterday. I hadn’t done much reading over Columbus Day so I thought it was just a local glitch when I tried to load my Redbird in Long Island, NY. But it is a nationwide problem and it is a serious one.
As of yesterday (10/12/2015) you can’t load Redbird at Target with any pin-based gift cards, prepaid cards or even bank issued debit cards. The picture above is from noonradar which also has a nice post about this Redbird issue.
The only option to load your Redbird in Target stores is cash, which is pretty useless. You can still load online with a bank-issued debit card that has the same name. Limits for online load are lower than in-store, $200/day and $1,000/month.
Redbird Dead?
It’s still early to say it for sure, but it looks bad.
DoC points out that the language on the screen now comes up slightly differently than it used to. Previously, the system popped up with a notice for the cashier, “no Target gift cards or 3rd party credit cards“. Now it says, “no Target gift cards or third party cards“. The word “credit” has been removed from the message.
One possibility is that this might have to do with a system upgrade regarding chip cards. Maybe this is an unintended side effect, since bank issued debit cards are not working either. It wouldn’t make sense to allow online loading with bank issued debit cards but not in-store.
Redbird has had nationwide issues in the past, so I’m still holding out some hope.
Debit Loads Working In Flushing?
I read on reddit that someone posted a picture of a successful load in Flushing, NY and another in DC. There’s a picture of the receipt from the Flushing location and it looks legit. I’ll head there later today or tomorrow to test it out.
Let us know about your experiences in the past few days.
8 thoughts on “Redbird Dead, Or Just Another Hiccup?”
I think it’s a system glitch. It makes no sense. I’m hoping it will get fixed in the next few days as well. This would be a big blow to my MS strategies.
and a data point from today… still same issue around 12PM in Staten Island. I tried a GC and a bank card. CSR had no idea what was going on and said “I guess it’s cash only”
I think I’m the unluckiest person on earth. I just got my first redcard yesterday and went to Target to try it out today. I thought I didn’t know how to use it and now I read all this.
Sorry to hear that. It is very unlucky indeed.
Indeed I think its dead, hope I’m wrong though.
As to the couple of reports of people still being able to load it yesterday, it doesn’t mean anything. When Target disallowed credit cards, there were a couple of people being able to still load with credit cards on May 6th, likely due to some stores/registers having failed to receive the update/fix that prohibited that type of payment.
P.S. I don’t mind you using my pic per se (in fact, thank you for referring to my post), but I’d prefer it if you show the pic fully as it displays on my site 🙂
My main hope comes from the fact that it was announced and that debit card loads are still allowed online. I’m still holding on to my redbird with some hope. Let’s wait a few more days.
p.s. i added the name of you website to the bottom of the pic. didn’t want to display all the black background. hope that’s okay
It’s totally fine of course, thanks.
The black background was a hasty choice in trying to format the picture for Twitter size…on that note I should edit it to something more palatable.
My thought has always been that if and when Target kills Redbird for MS (pin gift/prepaid cards at stores) it would be primarily for fraud concerns, not MS, so to this end I see the online debit loads as on par with that.
We’re just making educated guesses though…it is all we can do until things clarify.
That’s a good point. Let’s hope to hear some good news in the coming days.