THEY CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

(sorry... couldn't resist)

I try to make sure to give CVS some business too. I fill prescriptions there now. Also, between their Extra Bucks, the coupons they send me and their sales, its not hard to pick up a few household items or medicine that I would buy anyway. I'm not there everyday though. Prepaids at grocery stores are more $, but far more convenient for me, as CVS is out of the way, while there are 3 grocery stores I can hit after work and Walmart is not far out of the way. Depends on how much time I have.

Nobody is completely certain why OD cared, but in the end, what difference does it make why they cared? If CVS shuts down buying VRs by CC, then BB is dead...which would kill the very best MS play out there. I'd rather not explain to cashiers why I'm buying what I'm buying, and just have them ring me up.

One of these days, if a cashier asks me why I'm buying these, I'm gonna point to the rolls of toilet paper that's also part of my purchase, and say "to wipe my butt". ;)

Someone asked me the other day why I was buying $2k in VRs. I said ....uhhhh.... then he was like "what, are you a gamer or something?" I was like "yeah, you know, I don't want to expose my real CC on my account in case it gets hacked."

I also noticed a small paper sign (the same day I was buying VRs) on the cash register terminal that read "All Variable Load Prepaid Debit Cards must be purchased with cash. All other giftcards may be purchased with cash or credit."

IDK if VRs were included in this statement, or if it was specific to VDCs, but the cashier didn't blink an eye. The VDCs, Serve, etc were still in the same spot as the other GCs - not at the front.

There's no way they're losing money on these, otherwise they'd stop selling them since this is a no-profit item. Most likely the CC swipe fee gets passed on to the issuer of the cards, and/or is smaller than usual.

I was thinking about this too, because otherwise a 1k transaction could cost them $20. A CVS manager chatted me up, and she was telling me she loved that I shopped at her CVS, because I help out her 401k. Perhaps CVS has bonus structures based on revenue and not realized profits. Kind of makes me think that in general, CVS is a revenue driven company, hence the continued ability to buy VR with a cc. They probably accept the idea of these cards being loss leaders because they also greatly inflate revenue numbers. Anyway, that's my running theory.

I haven't been asked why yet, but I don't buy more than 1k at a time. I got a new cashier once that never rang anything over a couple hundred. I only bought 1k beans. He wanted to take a picture of the total to send to his friends joking about how someone cleared out the entire store. Funny experience.

Was your CVS the ones that allows only $200 load during transaction with cash and ID req on top of that?

Not in my neck of the woods.

I've got no problem telling the cashiers what I'm up to. If they're curious why I'm doing a $5,039.50 transaction, I'll absolutely explain to them that I just earned about $275 towards airfare. They usually have an excited reaction.

Which card are you using to get 5.5% back?

Do you know Netspend reload pack that you an reload up to $400 and charge $3.95 activation fee? Is it good? I saw it can be reloaded i to netspend visa or mastercard, how do I get the netspend visa/mastercard?

Why the .... does some person behind the counter give two ..... what you're buying it for? They work a CVS cash register not the FBI task force.

What a tool, this reminds me of a time I Was buying ECA (ephedrine/caffeine/aspirin) back ages ago, this was at CVS and there had been like two deaths from essentially unrelated activity on the news and some obese cashier was like "I can't wait until this is banned".
I was like, well a lot more people die and it costs this country a lot more with all the grossly overweight people in it.

wu tang zing

Finally found a CVS with beans in my area and hit it once the other day for $500 - new citi card so I didn't want to get shut down right away. Worked fine. Went back 2 days later and got 1k - after the first one was swiped the cashier had to key in ID information, presumably to make sure I didn't go over 1k per day. The swipe didn't want to read my ID so she had to manually key it in by hand. I felt really bad for her, but she was happy to help. The people behind me in line...they were not as happy.

Doesn't matter; got beans.

Citi TYP Preferred gives 5 ppd at drug stores, and then can be redeemed for airfare at 1.25 cpp (if you also have a TY Premiere account, otherwise 1 cpp). But that offer is long dead. There are a few other cards that still offer 5 ppd at drug stores which are posted about on various threads throughout the MS forum.