also not sure if anyone noted that the memo is not addressed to a To:

Unless the memo is a fake, the party is over on Monday. The hogs got slaughtered by buying $5K (maybe more) a day and signing up for accounts in the name of every friend and relative they have. Anyone who has any math skills can figure out that CVS was losing out on credit card purchases by paying swipe fees that exceeded the part of the $3.95 they kept from InComm. And we know InComm wasn't giving the cards away for free (although it may have started out that way to get a big customer base).

I believe they did this for a long time hoping to reap additional purchases and customers in exchange for the losses. But the bean counters finally noticed that this category was reaping much larger losses than they would tolerate and the CFO put an end to it, once and for all. A few store managers noticed the issue a lot earlier and stopped taking credit cards to protect their store's bottom line profit.

That's just my opinion and it makes the most logical argument for why they did it.

Yawn.... wishful thinking but sure.. let it play out... :td:

I would think the more likely culprit would be the CCCs who were really suffering from MS. Of course, it could also be all the fraud issues that were going on with the VRs as there is ample evidence in recent months of that being a concern for CVS.

It's addressed to "Store Managers", it's not uncommon for large corporations to have mailing lists like this to send to all "store managers" at one time.

Doesn't matter if it is regional or not. The dreaded thing about this memo is that the POS machines are hard coded to not accept anything other than cash.

If it was just a memo but the POS machines were not hard coded then that would only slow it down due to managers not aware of the memo or haven't disseminated that info down to the cashiers. But eventually all the store managers will get that memo and flow that down to its employees. Either way you look it the days are numbered.

OP is talking about above the memo where it says "To: // CC: "

He is NOT a regional manager. According to his LinkedIn profile, Cary Chaney resides in Providence, RI. That is the city where CVS has its headquarters as was pointed out earlier. In addition, this news release from 2008 pretty much tells you all you need to know:

ATLANTA, March 17 /PRNewswire/ -- InComm and CVS/pharmacy, the retail division of CVS Caremark Corporation, received the Best in Category Award for Best Third-Party Card Retailer in the 2008 Paybefore Awards announced at the Prepaid Card Expo in Las Vegas. CVS/pharmacy worked with InComm throughout 2007 to build its award-winning category by improving both the quantity and quality of its open and closed loop stored-value product offering.

"Both CVS and InComm have worked very hard to make sure that we provide our customers with the best possible selection of gift and prepaid products, and we are honored to have our efforts recognized by the Paybefore Awards," said Cary Chaney, CVS/pharmacy Category Manager.

The hogs have ample point balances. No one got slaughtered, they're just taking away the trough.

Businesses do not celebrate April Fools Day folks. I don't know why folks keep saying that CVS must be trolling and that they always celebrate April Fools Day. Only Google does a small publicity stunt on April Fools Day.

I wouldn't be laughing if my bank was doing an April Fools Day joke if they said my money in my account is gone and was wired off to some scammer.

If that statement is true then CVS will give up the title of best third party card retailer come 1Apr. Lol

The CC banks loved it, because of the huge increase in swipe fees. They stopped losses by using fraud alerts and call-in authorizations if the purchases looked at all unusual for the customers in whose name the cards were issued. Chase did this a lot (and they have the bulk of the CC market in the US) and I had several call-in authorizations and a couple of declines even on my cards.

Datapoint: Upon hearing this news, I ventured out today to stockpile birdseed. At one of these bean retailers near BOS, this very memo was posted on the wall, next to health and safety notices intended for employees. My heart sank; say it ain't so!

The (vanilla) sky is falling! Run, (blue) chicken little!

I wonder if anyone who knows this guy and has seen all these references to him online has alerted him that we are all talking about him. I bet he's getting quite a kick out of his 15 minutes of fame all over these fora and blogs and he's probably having quite a chuckle watching us all talk about him, research him and speculate about him. Kind of like googling yourself.

Hey, you can't blame me for wishful thinking lol.