Originally Posted by commdiver (Post 22475878)

Why would anyone share VR locations? There is no benefit to those who do the sharing.

Originally Posted by the_jaguar (Post 22474416)

Warning: This is going to be a lengthy post, but I do have an interesting story to share and also have a question to ask:

This past Sunday, I headed into a CVS late in the night (around 10PM) and bought $5K worth of VR's. Initially the store said the system restricted the sale to $1K only, but I asked them to try it anyway and like expected (after swiping my DL), the $5K purchase went through just fine.

Fast forward to last night, I go VR hunting to 3 different CVS stores. First store just had 1 VR left, which I purchased. I then went to the second store that had 5 of them available, so I asked the cashier to ring them all up and when the cashier swiped my DL (after scanning the 2nd VR), a message popped up on their POS that it wouldn't let the transaction go through (even before I swiped my CC), but the system allowed me to purchase <$1K worth of VR because there is no DL scanning, so I bought 1 VR there. I thought that the POS message was an operator error, so I went to the third store and here I try to buy $1K worth of VR and the same message popped out on the POS. I ended up buying just 1 VR, which went through without any issues.

Has anybody faced similar issues with the POS system not letting a purchase go through after scanning their DL (after the required 24 hour period)?

Btw, at the second store, since I gave the cashier multiple VR's, he goofed up and ended up giving me an unactivated VR instead of the one I paid for. When I got home last night to load the VR, I realized what had happen (after looking at the number on the receipt), so I ended up going back to the store in the morning today and a different cashier didn't seem to care and asked me to go find the one that was activated and take that instead (luckily for me, I went into the store last night just before they closed and I was there the first thing this morning, so they hadn't sold the activated one yet, phew!). Since I was at the store anyway, I ended up buying $999 worth of VR so that I can avoid the whole DL swiping issue again...

Originally Posted by toxicity (Post 22475696)

Do you think they make enough on the other items you buy to offset their losses on VR purchases w/ CC's? I seriously doubt it.

Originally Posted by commdiver (Post 22475878)

Why would anyone share VR locations? There is no benefit to those who do the sharing.

Originally Posted by Majuki (Post 22476242)

I've been sharing with people around the Philadelphia/Central NJ area, and it hasn't hurt our supply yet. It helps that one of the closest stores has an inventory of 100+ of these cards though. :D

Originally Posted by PtsJunkieWI (Post 22475899)

Somewhere buried in this thread is some theorizing about the actual "reset" time of the 24-hour $5k limit. It isn't necessarily midnight, in your time zone. Some theorize it's approximately 8pm EST. Others think later/earlier.
But the upshot is: Since you purchased ~10pm, it probably was already in the "next day". Thus your next day visit, if it was before the mystery reset time, then your $5k for that day period was all used up.

Originally Posted by cvasara (Post 22476321)

Nice to hear that 'your' store has plenty of stock. If that were 'my' store, I'd have half of those gone in less than 4 days, assuming $5K / per person, that is.

Originally Posted by commdiver (Post 22475878)

Why would anyone share VR locations? There is no benefit to those who do the sharing.

Originally Posted by SanDiego1K (Post 22475897)

Oh, I don't know. Because people are generously sharing MS info with me? I sent him a PM re the CVS in my area. We're in different neighborhoods, so he'll likely find something closer to home. It's been easy pickings in this area.

Originally Posted by oohaahouch (Post 22476794)

To the one who hid 4k vr's behind the playstation cards on bottom row, i wiped them off :D

Originally Posted by hamhead (Post 22476019)

Sigh. I don't know why this myth continues to be propagated.

Large merchants like CVS negotiate heavily discounted swipe fees with credit card companies. They aren't being charged 2-3% like your neighbor who knits baby sweaters and takes payments via Square.

Swipe fees end up in the neighborhood of 0.5-0.75% on CCs for large merchants. They end up making a profit after taking their majority cut of the activation fee from the reload issuer.

Use a little business common sense. If it was a losing proposition, there wouldn't be a single merchant who would take CC for prepaids, especially given they wouldn't be viewed as a strong loss leader (prepaids driving foot traffic to the store who would then buy higher margin goods along with their prepaids).

Originally Posted by ericdabbs (Post 22476842)

Way to stick it to them ^.