I have to wonder how many Financial Reviews and account closures are going to be spawned by all the last minute panic buying that's going on. I'd also really like to see a chart of CVS's VR sales for the last year. The spike for 3/31-4/3 would go to the moon!

Andyandy

I regularly pay my bill at a branch with $2k - $4k in money orders, made out to the bank. No issues.

Just loaded $3k via CC directly to three different Serve cards in San Francisco ($500/swipe x 6). No beans to be found. Manager said today is the last day for credit cards.

BTW, you can load a permanent Serve card with a temporary Serve card.

This seems right. I asked my friendly store manager what triggered the change and the fees was the consistent answer. Also she said they always used to be cash only under CVS but when CVS bought Longs (2008) they adopted what Longs had.

This suggests to me that there is a separate agreement in place between retailers and Incomm that allowed a better deal than costs would imply. (some kind of kickback). And I guess Long's had a good one with Incomm, which has now expired.

I was able to purchase $5k in a suburb of Minneapolis. The manager told me cash only tomorrow.

For me it has been immediate. Just please don't bounce the check!

Me too. I did a month's worth of buying in a week. I'm tempted to buy even more since my CVS is still selling on cc - yet I'm getting nervous about overdoing it.

Quote of the Day Regarding the Shutdown:

"This is probably Good for EveryBbdy… the heavy MSs doing 20K + per week of VR are those who take all the saver awards flying 4-5 times per year… and those people who saved the points for 3 years for a holiday can’t get no Awards…"

I'm maxed on the BB for April as well. I don't feel comfortable floating any until May. Wanting to complete my Citi Exec spend before my next statement cuts so I see this as an opportunity to branch out in my MS techniques. I've dabbled with WM in the past so I suppose I will be making a few more trips there this month.

Say it ain't so...the Conshohocken, PA CVS just outside of Philly is cash only as of 15 minutes ago. Bought $6500 last night between my g/f and I.

I think it has been pretty well established that the registers are hard coded not to accept CC payments now, but that doesn't even matter if the cashier won't even let you try it.

Today I got a stack of OV's and as I set them down, the cashier said "Oh, I don't think you can get those with a credit card any more." I said "I think that is only for the reloadable cards" and she grabbed the memo and looked and said "You are right, those should work. The memo is about these - you can't get these with a credit card any more, the system won't let you." and then she pointed to a huge stack of VR's behind the register.

I think it is pretty clear that this will be rolled out nationwide, and it will be enforced by the registers, not just the cashiers.

Confirmed, register hardcoded against at CVS downtown.

I really hope they allow serve loading via debit card. I foresee a decent opportunity in the near future if so.

My trusted source in DC Downtown is officially dead (spent $7000 there since sunday). Before I swiped my card the shift supervisor told me "cash only from tomorrow on". Then he was surprised about the "invalid tender" message and said "I am sorry, man". I heard a deep sigh from a fellow unknown MSer behind me in the line.

Didn't seem that way to me. OP started out complaining about people even mentioning OVs. Then went on to arrows and circles, as though answering a question here of "what is OV", was somehow similar to MMS diagrams. My point is that they are apples and oranges. The mere saying "OV means OneVanilla", on page 500+ of a thread, has no relationship to MMS placing a post titled in Bold Print, filled with circles, arrows and photos so folks don't even need to understand what they are doing. These two utterly different things don't belong in the same paragraph. :rolleyes: