Joshy119

ah! He is citing the three thousand dollar money order act or 3kMOA

:/

runb4fun

beside walmart, where do people buy money order using VGC? USPS? does UPS also work?

Mamibear

grocery stores

yes

no

CFFrost

I want to alert people to a problem I have encountered twice, which I feel is the biggest "problem" with VGCs at Walmart and may lead to their demise sooner rather than later if not dealt with properly when it occurs.

Twice now I have had a cashier enter "cash" instead of "debit" at some point during the transaction when I request split tender.

The problem with this is that a "refunded" or "voided" transaction CANNOT be pushed back on to a card (I generally use Simon cards, if anyone feels that makes a difference).

In the first instance, I just trusted the cashier who voided the transaction. However, after waiting about 2 weeks for the money to come back on to my card I eventually had to work with management to get my $500 back in cash. After this ordeal, this store has gotten much less friendly with money order sales.

In the second instance, since I was aware of the problem I just said to the cashier - no worries, do not void anything. I will come back to the store with cash for that half of the transaction. The cashier held on to the moneyorder but printed me a duplicate receipt while I went to an ATM and took out $500 to complete the transaction. It meant that I was able to liquidate one less GC, but everything worked out smoothly.

I am not sure if anyone has a better way to deal with this, but the point is to TREAD LIGHTLY when a cashier makes a fat finger mistake, and know that a voided transaction will not be properly credited to a vgc.

BananaPeppers

Thanks for the tip. I plan on trying VGC to Walmart MO. What exactly are the steps in getting one (without coming out as being suspicious?)

Happy

Thanks for the heads up.

I had this happened many months ago at a neighborhood store. I was surprised that why only after one card swipe the transaction was closed. Then both the cashier (who actually was the supervisor of CS) and I realized she miskeyed the first split payment as cash. At first she tried to get a manager over to void the transaction but the manager did not come after 10 min she was on the internal phone. I told her to forget about voiding and I just went to the Wells Fargo nearby to take $500 out and back to the WalMart so everything back to order. Never occur to me that a void after the transaction closed, money would not return to the card.

I know if a transaction never completes, and the void is BEFORE the transaction being closed, i.e. no receipt printed, then any previous successful swipes would immediately return the fund to the cards. There were some of such failures over time and the money always were back within minutes.

nfpa70e

This is my experience as well. Otherwise we are in for a lot of headache. Imagine you are using 4 VGCs towards split tender and transaction fails on the last card and if money didn't get put back in properly on previously swiped 3 cards, now we have to worry about refund on 4 VGCs instead of one like the user above had to fight to get the money back.

I wish you could scan all VGCs right there to find out the balance. You could verify right there before leaving the store.

Chelski

CFF, that happened to me and I pointed it out to the cashier. If she worked 40 hours/week it would've been her whole paycheck gone. They kept saying to use the ATM and I said I can only withdraw up to $300 at the ATM. I finally got them to do a work around by purchasing another MO to leave in the till. You have to be able to think on your feet and adjust.

krazykanuck

I'm so glad I don't try anything odd at WM. A buddy of mine that was active back in the days of the AS debit card wound up with a $7-8k purchase of valid MOs never debiting from his bank account and I remember it took him hours to sort it out, since obviously he didn't WM thinking he stole that money, or them debiting the money when there was less than that in the account.

Fly1Away1

the same thing happened to me. They ending up making a 2nd mo for the exact total. I kept one and they kept one so that everything would offset.

nfpa70e

Don't they have to process other customers in the meantime? I'm not sure how this on hold thing works. Let's say you want $1K MO, you do a split tender, the transaction fails when you swipe 2nd VGC, they void it. You tell them I will return with cash, could you use another VGC in place of cash? and complete the transaction, that way the money will be properly returned to the failed card and you won't liquidate one less GC

sfkhan

Went to Wally today and asked for 2X$1000 MO. He asked me for my ID which he said he needs to make a note as I have bought the MO multiple times from him. I thought this normally happens when you go above $3K....Is it safe to give him my ID next time I go or should try to avoid that particular rep? Just wanna stay under the radar

PaulMSN

I'd avoid him. He's most likely acting on his own initiative.

ericdabbs

That is BS that that he needs to make a note that you bought from him a few times. However I have encountered some OCD cashiers that ask for not only to see the cards I am paying with but my ID to check as if the PIN number is not already a factor authentication.

What is funny is that some cashiers that I have encountered before will ask me if they are "debit" cards. In my mind, I am like, of course they are, you think I can buy with credit? Like Paul said, I would avoid him if you can. Trying to argue with them never works.

Happy

This happened to a friend - the MO did not print and WMT ended up refunding him CASH on the spot. It took 4 weeks before WMT took the money from his BofA account for a total of $5K.

Similar thing happened to me in the long gone past - On one occasion, the cashier did not know the MO machine was not working because nobody told her when she came on her shift! At the end they refunded the cash. Though the money did come out of my BofA account as it should. On another occasion, the register did not have enough cash to refund so the cashier needed to "borrow" it from the back office. Then the Cash Receivable clerk working in the back office INSISTED to redo another set of MOs using CASH as payment versus refunding me cash. Took 30 min for her to fix the MO machine and finally did the Cash purchase on the same amount of MOs. I guess because she was the person reconciled the store's receipts, she knew how to balance the book at the end of the day.

This thing is not without perils. You really need to be able to think on the spot.