awkwardflyer

This week (ends Apr 19) in Walgreens

Free $5 Walgreens Gift Card (with W card) and purchase of 2 Vanilla Visa Gift Cards.

Bought two $500 Golds with CC without any ID. Will repeat tomorrow as I have several W cards.

maksimfa

LOL, I found your post so funny, especially with your signature line. lol.

Maybe you were paid minimum wage BECAUSE you provided minimum labor? Not the other way around?

As far as my experience... my first job as a cashier at a grocery store, then as a cashier, then customer service, then electronics sales at Staples... I always got paid more than minimum wage and had many many raises based on my merits.

Now you probably should remember, for most people working low paying retail jobs... they are either doing it as a first job (ie high school kids who don't care and just need drinking money), and older people for whom this is first job or second/third job as they need more money.

While the young kids may not care... for the people who DEPEND on that minimum wage job, they do not want to do anything to risk losing that job.

Letting a scammer buy from you while you check them out at the register... is a BIG BIG deal, and could lead to you being fired.

Keep that in mind when you go to cashiers. Especially if they are newer, they are very very risk averse. Buying gift cards for $500 to $5,000.... is a very risky activity in their eyes.

maksimfa

Oh wow, thanks, can't believe did not notice it. I usually buy OV, but will make a change for this. Woot Woot. Effectively lowers the buy cost by .5%. =)

Is there a limit?

ljderm

What are the "Golds"? Are they the ones that are NOT variable load and have a $5.95 fee?

Can a PIN number be obtained with them for loading onto a MoneyOrder?
Thanks

awkwardflyer

page 5 in weekly ad

no limit stated

Gold variable Vanilla GC $25-500 with 4.95 fee

Use any random four digits on the first transaction which sets the PIN

pier11

On similar deal at CVS the cards worked interchangeably. May be the case with WG as well.

PaulMSN

I had a prescription to pick up, so I went to Walgreens and got 2x$500 VGCs. The clerk knew nothing about the deal, so I went to get a WGC while she looked it up. The other clerk, who remembered the last deal, told her that they didn't program it in this time, and sure enough, the WGC didn't price out at $0.00, so the manager got involved.

She couldn't change the price of the WGC, so she took $5 off another item I was buying, which for some reason required finding a calculator to do the math. Altogether it was 5-10 minutes at the register, and because I'm sick with a sinus infection, I started sweating like crazy while all this was going on. Must have been a wonderful scene to all the people waiting behind me.

ljderm

Made it to a WG and was able to buy 4 cards, with the manager assisted WG bonus gift cards-longer process than would have liked (similar to what PaulMSN mentioned).

Went to a different store today, manager limited me to one card and cited "The Patriot Act" does not allow us to sell you more than $500 a day." I have seen other posters here mention a similar restriction at WG (or is the acronym WAGS?)

I have to admit that I have no clue about the content of the Patriot Act, but in my wildest dreams I cannot imagine the restriction of cash/equivalent gift cards!

After reviewing Title III of the Act on Wikipedia--to get a rough idea, one section mentions domestic transactions of 10k and above. Other sections mention foreign bank accounts. I seriously tried to find something that applies to these relatively small transactions of 3, 4 or 5 K, but can't really find anything. It mentions the SARs that folks mention here, but those don't seem to be applicable for this size transaction, either.

I know I have not even scratched the surface, but it sure seems to be overkill on the part of WAGS upper management, if that is indeed where this falls. Their corporate folks must have some serious legal concerns, maybe valid, maybe not.

One rule of retail MS is not to confront the managers, if you want to keep doing business of any sort at their stores. So I retreated with a !

mjcohen82182

When I go to WGs I always buy a 99 cent happy birthday card with 2x500 Happy Birthday VGC. They never look twice at selling me the cards, most of the time don't even ask for an ID. Tried the same at Rite Aid, worked once and didn't work another time. Younger cashiers seem to be much more willing, seniors are much more suspicious.

Omnipotent

That's a waste of .99 plus tax.

grayland

But...brilliant to stop inquisitive cashiers.

The problem might be the third or fourth time in a week. They may start to wonder how many birthdays you are buying $1k gifts for.

cyclotron

I ran into the issue of the $500 limit at Walgreens a few weeks ago. The manager pulled up the internal company website and showed me the entire webpage that deals with prepaid card and gift cards. It clearly stated that there is a $500 limit per person per day.

However the registers do not impose the limit and any cashier who does not know the limit will let you buy more than $500.

FTR 787

the register is moot in this case, cause you could literally goto as many WGs as you possibly care to drive to in 24 hrs and get atleast 1 GC at each... hit up 10, thats 5k, 20-25 and thats 10-12.5k etc you get the point! its just a hassle and not a good or smart policy by WG. much rather prefer the way CVS goes about it. although even in that case you can get around the limits.

maksimfa

Thanks for that. Never heard of the memo. Just some stores that said no.

Did buy $1k and more at a time at WAG with no issues.

^

GTFan

Ditto for that, tried to buy 4 Paypal MyCash cards on Saturday and got told I could only get 1 @ $500 per day.