Recently, I told all of you that I had sent Hive account@steemitgiftcards 68.703 SBD (slightly over $500 USD) for a $500 Visa Pre Paid Card. Again, This was not my original plan for my first serious Steemit payout but, it is what it is. I'm back to tell you how my adventure with transferring/spending SBD on a real world item went.

In a nutshell : Fantastic. I placed my order on Jan 24th. The transaction was smooth, painless and took less than a second for the actual transfer to take place. Admittedly, I was skeptical about all this, but since the proceeds from that payout were truly unexpected ( Thank you to the upvoters and commentator's; You Rock!) I figured it would be a good first test.

It was on Jan 26th I sent an email to ryan@steemcards.com expressing my concern over the fact that the card had not shipped yet. He informed me that it would take 7-10 business days for the card printer to send the custom printed Steem Visa card. ( Note here guys, this IS something that should be made clear on website at time of purchase but, not a deal breaker.)He then offered to send a generic one if I would like . I took him up on that offer and today Jan 29th, I received the card as promised.

Sorry about the cheap effects but...privacy, ya know

It was a OneVanilla Visa Pre-paid card, nothing too flashy ( Ryan did warn me the Steem cards looked very cool...perhaps next time, I'll be able to afford to wait a little longer.) I immediately checked the balance through their website portal, www.onevanilla.com. After a momentary scare where it told me there was a problem after I put the card number etc, etc the first time, I merely re-entered the information and it verified that, yes there was $500 on the card.

Now....for the REAL test!

AS far as actually using the card, I made three separate purchases, totaling around $100.00 and everyone went off without a hitch. One other tip, if you intend on making cash withdrawals from the card balance, there is a $1.25 fee associated with that, and you WILL need to set up a PIN through the OneVAnilla site, should you choose to take a generic one.

Overall, I would give Hive account@steemitgiftcards a 5 star rating. Customer serves was prompt, friendly and very helpful, transaction ease was excellent, no slower than running your bank card at the grocery store, cost is unbeatable ($7.95 fee for card, $2.95 for shipping...., payable in Steem or SBD....THAT"S IT!) delivery was excellent, 5 days total from order made to order received.
They also sent me a really cool Steemit logo sticker...that pic at the top is it. How cool is that?

Ryan, You guys are awesome and I will definitely be using your services again.