That’s right — the well-known king of account shutdowns is back again. This time, even his GameStop account got shut down, likely because he heavily used those 20x points promotions on purchases. My guess is that he was buying Visa gift cards, third-party gift cards, or profiting from reselling game consoles. In any case, GameStop shut down his account and confiscated about $500 worth of points in it.

Of course he wasn’t happy. As a frequent flyer when it comes to account shutdowns, he went straight to the Better Business Bureau (BBB) to file a complaint. Unfortunately, GameStop wasn’t having it. After investigating, they said he had abused the promotion, so they would not return the points and would close the account. They also said the decision was final and could not be changed.

Still, he refused to give up and pointed out that GameStop’s terms did not explicitly mention abusing points. GameStop dug in as well, saying directly that they had the right to confiscate points and shut down the account. They also said they would no longer respond to related questions.

So his next step was to prepare to file in small claims court.

For most people, shopping points from merchants like Best Buy, GameStop, and grocery stores are just extra bonuses, and merchants also treat these rewards programs as a way to increase customer loyalty. But in reality, many merchants do not clearly state that these rewards programs are designed only for individual consumers and not for business use — in other words, they are not meant to be used to generate profit from the points. If you spend heavily or even use purchases for resale to make money, merchants generally do not like to see that, so account shutdowns and reviews are very possible. The same applies to credit card rewards systems. If you use cashback from a personal card to make money, especially at scale, it could very well attract the attention of the credit card issuer and lead to an account shutdown.

Back to this case: if he actually sues in small claims court, GameStop probably would not want to appear in court. My guess is that they would ultimately pay a bit of money and then blacklist him permanently.