My Grandmother gave me one of these for Christmas

What a scam! You can use the card like a Visa card but of course you can't get every last penny off the card unless you purchase something of the exact value. If you wanted to turn the money back into cash you'd put the card in an ATM machine and you are going to get charged again. Just to find out how much she put on the card I called their 800 number and they charged me $0.50!!! 👎

On top of which she was told I could use this in Japan. What they didn't tell her was that it would cost me to make the call to America to turn it on.

They have a webpage to turn them on. Unfortunately they require your e−mail address so they can spam you with ads. AND the web form doesn't work or at least did not work for me. Calling their number didn't lead me to an activation option so I had to talk to representative for which including holding took 10 minutes (ie about $3) and I was told "you will be charged a fee for using these services". When I told the guy it was costing me money to make the call he offered to call me back in Japan, of course he didn't call back, probably because he didn't know how to call Japan. So, I had to call again taking another 10 minutes (another $3)

I thought the AAA was supposed to be like customer owned. Why are they screwing people out of money? Void this scam like the plague!