Data point time: new MS'er who just succeeded with their first MO. Purchased VVGC from CVS for $50. Confirmed Incomm/Sutton. Next day go to local grocery chain and get money order for $49 +$1. Swipes and drains fully. Sweet! Let me go buy a $500 card here. Go to the gift card rack in the grocery store and find a variable $20-$500 VVGC Incomm/Sutton and go to the self checkout line. Scan some milk and the gift card and get the "this item can't be purchased here" error. Clerk brings me over to her register and rings up my items. I pay and then she says the receipt said the gift card got "declined." It's odd because the purchase obviously went through as I got some milk, too. And my Chase Sapphire card has a large limit. She says "OK we need to go to the CS desk and they will fix it" As we walk over I check my phone and it looks like the purchase for $509.65 did go through on my Chase account. This is strange and my head starts to spin. Not the attention I wanted to draw my first time at this store.

The CS womanwas the same woman who issued my MO so I was like there goes my chance at laying low. She says she had to "refund" the gift card and reissue a new one. She tries to do that with the same type of VVGC and we get the same "not approved" error. I'm sweating. She calls over the manager and they decide we have to use a different type of gift card and for some reason this particular one is not working. I'm like OK, but it needs to be a certain type of card for my use case. So, we go find another VVGC $20-$500 Incomm/Sutton, but this one says "Congratulations" instead of the generic "Gift" one. It ended up working!

This was very strange and I couldn't find any information on this. Was this an issue on Incomm/Suttons end? The grocery store?

Thanks for any feedback and for all of your information!