Shell GC experience
Spent $78 (+ $1300.00) to get 2300+ airmiles
Drove an hour to the nearest Shell,
plan was to buy 5 x $100 prepaid m/c my airmiles and then use them to buy 5 x $100 Home Depot g/c with dh airmiles. and then repeat with DD airmiles and DS airmiles We are building a porch on the front of the house so planned to buy wood at Home Depot.
First Shell bought 1x $100 m/c with Amex (yay) but she couldn't
figure out how to activate any of the Home Depot gift cards, so left with 1 prepaid m/c
Went to next shell 7 minutes away on Simcoe St North Oshawa, it's a tiny little booth, but they had the cards. Told the only attendant this is going to take a while so if customers come in to pay for gas I will step aside for them. OMG that booth was Tiny.......
Used first prepaid m/c that I had just bought at the other store to buy 1 Home Depot card.
Then I got flustered, and made a mistake bought 4 x 100 gift card on same transaction Drats!!!
Recovered by making 3 more $100 transactions but spend limit was now $300 more than planned.
Once purchased all the prepaid master cards (was able to use Amex here as well) tried to purchase the Home Depot Cards
Well the prepaid m/c kept declining, so I called the number on the back of the card thinking maybe you have to activate them. It was just a recording, there is no way to speak to anyone. The prompt says to put the numbers in and when I did it says the cards are good to go so I couldn't figure out why they weren't working. I also had to borrow attendants phone as I left mine in the Car. Finally I read the fine print and it says can take up to 24 hours to activate!!! You do not have to call to activate they activate automatically.
I had already bought one prepaid m/c and it worked so the attendant and I figured we would just wait a few minutes and he kept trying and sure enough eventually the prepaid m/c all went through.
The process took over 2 hours because customers kept coming in and it is time consuming activating all the cards
Started at 7:30 pm and finished at 9:45, all the restaurants that we like in the area were closed and we hadn't had dinner and we were still an hour away from home.
DH was waiting in the car the whole time... I had no idea it would take this long.... his car battery died because the key was in the wrong position and his window was open and it started to pour rain while we were waiting for CAA.. He had to drive home with a wet bottom, ah bless him.....
Ended up eating McDonalds 
Gave the attendant a $25 gift card to Canadian Tire for being so helpful. He turned his air con off everytime I called the m/c phone number because the air con was so loud I couldn't hear on the phone and the booth was stifling hot............
He had called is boss at one point because he was having trouble activating one of the cards, then his boss kept calling him to ask him questions about me, his boss was very worried that someone I was going to defraud them. I gave him my name and phone number address etc. He told me they aren't supposed to sell more than $500 worth of prepaid cards..... well I would just have had dh come in and buy $500 so that wouldn't have stopped me. LOL
Things I learned,
prepaid cards can take up to 24 hours to activate,
don't get flustered and purchase all the cards in one transactions,
have lots of patience.
Thanks to everyone for helping me on this forum!
This was one seriously confusing AM situation at Sobeys when it happened but we are all hoping we get 150AM x however many cards we bought. Its a big glaring unchecked AM in my spreadsheet
