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.
