HOT HOT HOT Jewel Gift Card Money Maker

UPDATE 9/12: This deal is no longer working!! Hope some of you got in on it though!

I saw this on Mashupmom this morning and just tried it! I can verify it works! I now have $300 on a Jewel giftcard and spent about $36 for that $300. See how Mashupmom explained it below (I figure there's no need for me to try to reexplain it when she did it so well! My comments are in the bold italics

So you know how the Jewel buy $100 in gift card mall gift cards, get a Catalina good for a $10 Jewel gift card now stacks up to five times in one transaction? Check this out. Note: They could pull this at any time, do at your own risk.

1. Buy a $500 Visa gift debit card. These have a $5.95 activation fee. Get back $50 — five Catalinas each good for a $10 Jewel gift card. You just made $44.05.
2. Buy another $500 Visa gift debit card. Tell them you would like to pay the $5.95 activation fee in cash. Then pay for the second $500 Visa gift debit card with the first $500 Visa gift debit card you just bought. (Be sure to push the credit button on the swiper machine — if you push debit it will ask for a PIN.) Get back $50 — five Catalinas each good for a $10 Jewel gift card. You just made another $44.05, but this time you only actually spent $5.95 out of pocket.
3. Repeat. (I would recommend only doing a couple of cards per transactions, or people behind you - and your cashier - might get mad at you. I try to make everyone happy, so I take a break and do some shopping and then do it again, or drive to another Jewel - happy money making!)

The activation fee is per card. So you want to make sure you buy one $500 gift card to maximize your savings, not multiple smaller cards. After the first $500 outlay, you are only paying $5.95 for each transaction and getting back $50 — however you will always still have a $500 Visa debit at the end which you can use pretty much like cash.
Note: You can only activate gift cards at the cashiers, so don’t go through self-checkout. This only works with Visa — Mastercard is not participating, and AmEx has a four-hour hold after purchase so you can’t roll the deal.

(I know $500 seems like a lot to put out there...but you don't lose that money - and you just gain money to spend on groceries! You could use it for your gas money - sadly, we all know that will go pretty quickly, or keep it at home and use it online to pay for bills such as electric and internet.)