robin1234

Yes, I just heard that this moment from my wife. We, and a friend on our road, received the check a week ago. Another neighbor received the prepaid card a few days later. People are complaining about them, as, depending how you use it, there may be fees attached.

This seems to be a trend in the US now. For instance, we terminated our service with Verizon a few months ago. They owed us $70 or thereabouts. Instead of sending us a check, they sent us a prepaid Visa card. Seems to be a complicated way to send money.

durham_lad

Yes, I heard that they are issuing debit cards instead of checks.

robin1234

I believe the advice is to keep the money. There is no obligation to return it. (This was discussed earlier in the thread.)

Lion in Winter

It might be worth giving them a call if you can't find your address on there. That would probably be an "acceptable reason". I did just get my refund on Friday, electronically, from a return sent electronically back in mid March. They have allegedly hired some more people to answer the phones, too. I don't know how much the toll call costs you, but if you can set up a skype account online and deposit a little money in it, I believe your rate would be 2.3 cents per minute.

scrubbedexpat091

I did try calling Tuesday, I spent an hour on hold, but then their system hung up on me, so I will try again this week.

I have to check our long distance rate, we never make such calls so I don't even really now what the rate is, I want to say 5 cents a minute but am not 100% sure.

Prepaid cards are a pain, only good really if wanting to buy stuff, if you want to use the money for something else like I dunno pay rent, prepaid cards can be iffy if there is no way to get the money off the card such as at an ATM. Also wonder how a prepaid card works as to exchange rates, and if they charge a foreign current fee etc. Plus a good % of the time prepaid cards wont even work online in Canada, many places only accept true credit cards, wont accept prepaid or Visa debit. They really are a complete pain the rear end.

I was thinking about using the money if I got it for Canadian Citizenship since the fees are a tad on the expensive side, but if its a prepaid card wont work to pay the fees since immigration does not accept said cards.

According to the article and the photo included the envelope says this on the outside : "If this person is deceased, please check off and return it,"

So seems that maybe one is supposed to return it if the individual is dead?

Here is a photo of the envelope (different person in the photo but deceased still)

https://media.graytvinc.com/images/6...ased+check.jpg

I wouldn't be surprised if the government doesn't even know whats going on with all this...ha ha

Found some of the fees associated with the debit card they are sending out:

$2 withdrawal fee after the first withdrawal, 25 cents for a balance inquiry and $5 for more than one in-person withdrawal. No more than $1,000 can be withdrawn from an ATM in one day. International ATM fee is $3 + whatever the ATM owner your using charges, each withdraw here in Vancouver would be like $7-$8 once the cards fee + the banks fee + exchange rate is factored in to the $3 USD$ charge.

Anyone wanting a paper check, when they receive their card can call the 800 number, ask for a Money Network Check to be mailed, once they receive it they can fill it out, but then have to once again call to then have the check activated before cashing it or giving the check to someone/bill payment etc.

Oh and apparently people are mistaking the debit card envelope being mailed as junk mail since it has no actual indication its from the government.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/con...se-it-n1216991

spouse of scouse

I know this wouldn't help with paying for your citizenship, but if you got a card you could buy your groceries and other purchases you usually make with it. I'm assuming you don't have to use the whole amount at once, you'd have to do a huge grocery shop if you did

scrubbedexpat091

Actually I found out Canada Immigration has modernized and now accepts prepaid and debit cards, last time I paid a fee (a couple years ago now when I renewed my PR card) they were only accepting credit cards, but seems they have managed to enter the modern world...

Still not entirely sure I will, it just seems silly not to and then if I ever did leave Canada, the option would be there to return if I had citizenship, but other than that only benefit really is voting, I suppose for those qualified for federal jobs citizenship helps.

I don't know what 1,200 US$ (about 1,600 in Canadian dollars) in groceries looks like, but I can safely say we likely do not have a big enough fridge or freezer to store it all...ha ha

I panic when our grocery bill hits $100 a week...ha ha

It wouldn't be enough to pay our rent in full, but would pay all but $150 or so of it.

I could put it into a "high interest" savings account locked for 5 years and increase the value by $150.

I tell ya the only way to make money and get anywhere is to start with it...ha ha

If my wife put it into a tax free savings account for 10 years, the bank calculator says I could increase the value by 1,000 to a total of 2,600.

But if we can put in $100 a month (we cant) after 10 years that stimulus money would be $16,000 and some change.

The bank calculator assumes an annual yield of 5%.

Just what their calculator for TFSA says, but of course the IRS doesn't consider a tax free savings account in Canada as tax free, so I dunno what issues it might cause there.

In 50 years there would be enough to buy that house in the link I posted in the Canada forum but of course in 50 years house values will be much higher most likely, oh and I'll be dead too.

Now if we could lower our rent $700 a month and put that $700 a month into a TFSA the calculator says after 10 years Estimated total value of your TFSA is: $109,525 which would be a sizable down payment if we had income needed for a mortgage.

Looking at it this way, sickening in a way how a basic need like housing creates such significant problems due to the high cost of rent.

robin1234

I remember another limitation of the prepaid cards, especially when they have a limited amount of money on them. We had this one from Verizon with $70 on it. I thought, we’ll just use it at the gas station, till all the money is gone. Well, it was rejected there - reading about paying at the pump, l learned that, since they didn’t know how much gas you were planning to buy, they put a hold on $100, so rejected the transaction if the card had less. They weren’t to know we had a Toyota Yaris, therefore never spent more than $25 on gas.

SpoogleDrummer

If you don't have a Google Voice number it might be worth getting one, calls to the US and Canada are free.

scrubbedexpat091

I forgot about pre-auth 's as well. At least here gas stations let you pick the amount of gas you want to pre-auth for. If they didn't they would need to pre-auth $200 and probably tick people off, so good solution just let people choose how much they want at the pump.

Online grocery store shopping though, always need a good chunk more on the card vs estimated total, $120 estimated total they usually pre-auth $200.

Hotels of course do it, which vary a bit hotel to hotel, but in the ones I have worked at the pre-auth in generally room & tax + $50-$100 per day to cover incidentals.

tht

https://www.paypal.com/va/smarthelp/...paypal-faq1834

If you can get it in to something like PayPal you should be able to send the cash on from there.

scrubbedexpat091

I didn't get any useful info from the IRS person I spoke to. I did get a lot of, I don't know Sir, I am not sure Sir, and things are changing quickly so call back next week.

spouse of scouse

Well that was a worthwhile conversation! How annoying.

Former Lancastrian

I thought that was the standard conversation before Covid 19 came along

HDWill

That's at least better than bureaucrats who very confidently give you completely bad information.