Good to know. Didn't really intend on it anyways as I only need 4K VR spend before the end of March. Hopefully this won't be an issue at the few CVS's around me.

I'm grateful to this community. How can I take this personally? Thanks for everything guys!

I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone posting about this, but apparently I've had a couple issues with either tampered with OV's or had activation issues.

About 2 weeks ago I bought 5 OV's, 3 of which worked fine, and 2 of which supposedly were never activated, even though on the receipt it said activated. I called In*com and filed an issue with them and they said they would get it squared away for me and I needed to email my receipt showing activated over. I followed up this week about the issue, and they told me that they aren't activating them, and they consider the case closed and I have to follow up with the store, not them. Obviously I don't want to do a dispute w/ the CC company, but don't want to rock the boat too much at CVS either.

Has anyone else had similar issues? My gut tells me that the cards that were inside the package didn't match what card was supposed to be inside, and the swap was made at the factory or somewhere, because the packaging is identical and looks perfect, like no tampering.

Just another data point:

For the past several months I've been manufacturing $10K a month using VR at the same CVS with no issues. The CVS always has plenty of VRs in stock, and the cashiers have always been comfortable and helpful with the transactions. Unfortunately, over the past couple of weeks I've been having issues and today they officially shut me down. Here's the long version (as told to me by the day manager and independently confirmed by 2 cashiers).

The manager (who's a miserable f**K) has been getting inquiries from their corporate audit/compliance group regarding large VR transactions. The manager hates dealing with audit/compliance so he's asked his cashier to stay below their internal reporting threshold (it's not clear what this is). After various cashiers exceeded this a few more times and the manager got more calls from audit/compliance he put the kibosh down and said no more VRs with credit cards and each transaction needs to be rung up separately.

I feel confident about the facts above (again independently confirmed), but his excuse is suspect. When I asked the manager about this he said it was a corporate policy that's been out for several months, they've been having a lot of issues with VRs, and he's been asked to enforce it now. My take is because he's a miserable f**k and doesn't want to deal with this issue he's lieing about the "policy change."

One thing is certain though, the point of sale system still allows VR purchases with credit cards (again independently confirmed), it's just the cashiers have been told by the manager not to use credit cards and to ring up each transaction individually.

I'm going to try again this weekend with my favorite CVS cashier, and if she declines the credit card use I have to visit other CVSs. This worries me cause I need about $24K in spend over the next 3 months to meet my card bonus thresholds (2 citi exec elites and 2 united chase) and was planning to up my VR MS to $15K. I'll report back.

Your best and easy thing to do is go to the store manager and tell him even though the receipt says 'activated it is not. Have him call incomm and verify the status, then he should do refund or replacement and apologize for your inconvenience. no stress!

I think green dot is always cash, some times one kind of card gives a problem, so they feel its safer to do it all across every cards.

Is it worth bringing this up to the manager? "My understanding is only Green Dots are cash, otherwise corporate owned CVS allow VR purchases with credit?"

I know the defacto policy here is never call, talk to the manager, or state a position. My guess is he'd just get more pissed. :D

Your guess is correct! Don't bring attention to yourself. Just go to another CVS. There's 2 CVS' 2 miles from me that are plenty stocked with VRs, but manager won't sell with CC.

There's 1 CVS 5 miles from me that sells VRs on CC all day long. Guess which one gets my business?

If you can avoid that manager and find a more lenient one, then maybe you could have a better chance.

The manager at my CVS knows me by face now and we know each other on first name basis. Has been a great relationship for far until last night when a newbie cashier wanted to call my credit card issuer.

Her reaso: 'I want to make sure your credit card company can authorize this purchase since its a large amount. I was already pissed off by her comment and I declined to give her my card and told her she cant do what she wants to do. I asked her to call her manager who came and helped me out while apologizing for the new employee. While I was walking out, I overheard the manager telling her "this isnt walmart".

Im so glad to have formed good relationships with the people working her, they always come to my defense when these newbies are working.

One thing I've learned playing this game is you need to be flexible and adaptable. Unfortunately, this CVS is half a mile from my house and the others are much further away so I'm a little more motivated to figure it out here. I'll try another cashier, my favorite Saturday morning girl, and if that doesn't work it's off to another CVS. :D

Was told today by a manager that new corp policy is 2k max. However I know the pos allows for 5k still. Anyway he told me he would allow me to purchase 3k. He was very nice and accomodating as all of my local ice cream paroles are.

I had the same issue last week where I bought 5 OV's at CVS and 1 was not activated. I called Incomm, and they said they would send the information to the compliance department. The compliance department denied the claim. The packaging looks perfect with no tampering evident, but the expiration date on the card inside the package does not match the expiration date printed on the outside of the package. This is in Dallas, Texas.

Just snagged the last 8 VRs in the store from my secondary CVS location for $4K using Amex gift cards. Had a the ID scan but that's ok. No black helicopters yet.

My primary location is running thin also... hopefully they restock soon.

That last part makes no sense, as the comunications I've heard from corporate to store are do NOT ring up individual transactions because it defeats their ID tracking to enforce the daily limits. One store manager actually got nervous when I really only wanted to buy <$1000 that day and it didn't ask for my DL. She said 'oh corporate told us we really need to be scanning your DL'. I said what do you want me to do, buy an extra just to satisfy your process? She just grumbled and rang it up.

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and the 5 cvs I've visited are all sold out. One location for over a month. I talked to the cashier and she didn't believe me that they were sold out because she just rang up 10 that day. We go over to the stack and she's shocked that it's all been cleared out.

Told me she just restocked it on Monday morning.