I went first time to a Safeway in a city called Foster City today. The Reloadit rack had a very tell-tale pattern. The $500 cards were plentiful, and there was only one $950 card left. I read that to indicate there's rampant maxing out of Reloadit cards there. It's a 80k/yr median income neighborhood, so it's definitely not the underbanked who are hording the higher value Reloadit cards.

I went to self-checkout with the last $950 Reloadit card. I preemptively asked the self-checkout cashier if it's ok to purchase the Reloadit card with a credit card, because it was the end of the day, and I really didn't want to whip out credit card after he ok's the transaction and then to get shot down.

Cashier scrutinized the Reloadit card, decided and told me that it's no problem. Just then, a supervisor walked by, so he asked the supe.

Supe said, "Cards are cash only. He can reload it credit card." Story ends here.

I was reeling but without the motivation to protest that I was getting a reload and not a prepaid card. Now that I've had a few hours to replay the exchange in my head, I'm only getting more confused over what the supe really meant.