Agreed - but the One Vanilla are working great, knock on wood!

CVS is also giving $10 in extra bucks if you "buy Netspend Visa or PayPal MC reload able prepaid debit card".

Are either of these cards usable for BB?

Neither of these cards are "prepaid cards" these are debits cards - like a bank account. PP, can be "hacked" into a prepaid card - by calling in and asking for the fees back, but not sure it is worth the effort. Netspend is headache city, though some survive it by trying to stay low and slow on it. No way to turn Netspend into a prepaid card

At every cvs i go to i tell em i need to sign up for eb
They hand me the form to bring in later and scan and newly issued key card. As long as you bring that and the receipt w coupon on it in another time you can get the $5 on a new purchase of items (not gcs)

I uploaded the image from cvs.com...
http://i43.tinypic.com/or2m42.jpg
...in case it might help the discussion. Please designate by number/letter which package you selected, and the 5th and 6th digits on the actual card inside. Example...

I think that 3,4,9,A,C,D,E are definite stay as far away from as possible unless you want a DC that acts as a CC and not to unload it except using it like a CC

3s 1 & 2 I believe are the $20-500 GCs the rest are all fixed amounts no sense going with them,imo. Now Ive seen #2s in both this design with the old card piced on the front of the pkg and the new card with GIFT spelled out in large letters Im not into these right now,if I was Id be buying them 1 by 1 and checking teh card before getting a 2nd or more

Sorry One Vanilla (number 9) works great! No issues there at all. Bought at CVS - went next door and swiped in WM!

The valid 35s were 8/20, 6/21 and 7/22. The one bad 18 was 8/22. I'll take my $3.95 loss and liquidate through VR tomorrow.

From photos above- D was an 18 (bad), E was a 35 but fee is 5.95. 1 and 2 were both 35s (good) - note the small card image on lower right- calligraphy "Gift" is smaller and at top of card image. On the bad one, "Gift" was larger, covering entire card image - this is what I'll be using to differentiate until proven otherwise.

In my experience (FWIW):
I suspect people are still working #3 as well in a way that is beyond me.
#1 has Gift across the entire card picture on the front, which I think has some association with "newer" card (exp 22). I think #2 is the older version of that (exp 21) and has gift small and centered on the card picture. C-E are the newer / seasonal ones, with 5.95 fee (exp 22). #9 works (exp 22).
While doing some plastic recycling today I noticed WM carries OV MC with 4.94 fee, never seen that before.

All of WM Visa plastic is 4.94 (all new for the holiday season) and are NOT vanilla - so far they have worked great! Though the best you can get for them is 2X. They are not a 5x or 6x store for anyone that I know.

#1 and #2 - silver and gold variable loads - exist in old and new designs.

## 5,6,7,8,B - fixed amounts, not much relevant to MS having variable variaties.

Not all holiday ones are from Sunrise in-store. Some are issued by InComm. Be careful.

Question - what can I buy with extrabuck? Can I use it to buy VR?

NO! Only Safeway's coupon can be "worked" - at CVS the deal is to buy what you need

But they are convenient to recycle if one is not obvious. For the record, I saw 3 types: sunrise GCs, Vinalla Visa GC, and One Vinalla Mastercard (this was the one that surprised me due to MC and something that "should" be free of the VVGC headache, if one can buy with CC). Some of us are just looking for cost efficient rapid ways of unloading AXPP.