Reloadable Retail Store Gift Card

Do you know someone who has pirated satelite service using their computer and a card reader/writer??? this does work, all you do is trick the card into thinking that you have service and all channels are included, eventually every so often the satellite companys send out a "flash" is you will, that wipes the card clean and it has to be reprogrammed...

so my question is this, although considerably illegal, do you think it would be possible to use the same type of technology to manually reload a gift card to a store, such as Hastings or Wal-mart, wihtout paying for it??? In theory, if you can do it with satellite, couldn't you do it with a reloadable gift card??? Im sure some software would need to be written and a card reader/writer is expensive. But the expensises would cover themselves. Is this possible???