Originally Posted by
LAref2014
Simon's are definitely a YMMV situation, as has been said many times on this forum. I originally drove about 50 miles to nearest Simon and purchased 5-500 VGCs for minimum spend. Wife purchased same amount a little bit later that day on different card. A few weeks later, when I went back, I asked what the max purchase was and was told $10K a day, but over $3K needed paperwork. I said give me $3k worth. She did everything and then said with the fees, the order came to over $3k and I had to fill out paperwork. I said sure and proceeded to fill it out. Nothing out of the ordinary except a space for "intended use of the cards (gift, budgeting tool, online shopping, etc)". I put down budgeting tool. I asked for a copy of the form so that I could have it filled out for future purchases and she complied. A few weeks later we found ourselves in Houston outlet mall where $2.5K purchase triggered the paperwork drill and a call to the cc bank to ensure the card was okay. Needless to say, I've been back to my closest mall to purchase more. Maybe a lot more MSers or stolen cc in Houston triggers that response.
Exactly. People should know by now, your locale definitely determine what you can do. This extends to everything relates to the activities of the whole food chain.
The amount in my mall does not include fee.
There is no such question on the form here - so not only the allowed amount varies, the form is NOT standard either. The mall manager KNOWS what people are buying these for. She freely talked about this to us, that "most people buy them for their airline miles and hotel points." They just want to make sure people do not try to evade the form by so-called "fly under the radar." They have compliance to do, and people who tried to avoid compliance requirement would be banned after they are discovered. CSRs said she had seen "good people" inadvertently turned to "bad people" on their internal records when they tried to only buy below threshold.
There are folks come in to buy $10K a pop, all on one card. There are also corporate accounts buying $20K a pop. In fact on multiple occasions we came in the same day after such purchasers brought out all our preferred design at the kiosk. Our mall manager was super accommodating and brought new inventory out from the office.