Confirmed the 4x digital coupon on the $100 fixed value VGC worked today.

(NOTE: It didn't work yesterday when I bought some after loading the coupon to my account. NOTE TO SELF: READ the dates of the coupon - Fri Sat Sun)

What was the outcome? I would have gone over with the AGCs still in hand and hopefully you still had a receipt that had the AGC #s purchased on them and that hopefully would have been good enough. I imagine you would have had to spill the beans why you purchased AGCs using your CC and then used the AGCs to puchase VGCs when you could have simply purchased the VGCs with your CC. Which just might get relied to corp

This is 1 reason I keep my purchases to $2K max per store and even that may be too much. Everyone is simply scared to be responsible when Corp sends a memo that the transactions were all fraud and they cost the store/company $1000s in losses and there goes their job.

I just got shut down by a Seattle area QFC head manager when trying to buy $500 VGCs. She said the new policy is maximum $2000, cash only, and they must be purchased at the Customer Service desk.

I've been buying there a lot and she's always given me dirty looks. My guess is she got the memo that said $2,000 max on a credit card and willfully misinterpreted it to be cash-only. The Customer Service desk requirement makes no sense since the cards are displayed on the racks by the checkstands. She said something about federal requirements.

I may challenge her at some point since I doubt the gift card providers like store managers creating policies that make it difficult to sell their products.

Anyway, as far as I know, its always been open season at QFC until now.

This misinterpretation thing is quite common actually and I sometimes wonder if they do that on purpose or are just too retarded to understand the difference.

The CSD requirement makes perfect sense though as this kind of transaction has a high fraud risk and I understand that store managers want their best (read: smartest) employees to handle that. Honestly, some of my staff (warehouse not retail store) is too stupid to count to 10, but you get what you pay for I suppose and unfortunately corporate won't give me a decent budget to hire decent staff.

Had a strange incident this morning buying 998 worth of MO's. After swiping an OV for the first swipe, before the CSR keyed in the payment, she stopped in mid sentence and said "um, let me see your card". I pulled out my PPBDC which I had on top of the OV and handed it to her. She turned it over to inspect the back like she was looking for a barcode on a GC. She said that wasn't the card I used, I replied yes it was and said to start the transaction over. I planned on fat fingering my PIN, but forgot I had changed it recently to match my default I use on VGC's. That will teach me to worry about remembering too many pins. The first swipe then took and had to use my bank card for the second. A line had formed so I just entered the real pin and finished the swipe. I hope I didn't burn my PPBDC with round number debit of $500.

I am not trying for a sky is falling post, just wanting to see if anybody else has had same issue. I know she didn't see what card I was using as she was looking at the register when I swiped and the card reader was blocked.

I know these don't work at WM MC or kate, but has anybody used for regular transaction at register? WOrst case I dump these to AFT and eat the fees or switch to other VGC at walmart. I don't want to sit on them until June with the potential for fraud. I can float it but don't like having live cards for more than a day or two.

Has anybody else seen this today?

I got busted by one of my clerks about a month ago (told me i had to use a card with my name on it). I tried to just avoid him on my return trips, but the last time I had to buy from him I swiped my vgc, entered the pin and he asked to see my card because it "wasn't working right". I showed him a debit card with my name on it, he hit a button and it processed just fine.

I have bought from her several times and never had an issue. She seemed surprised by something on her screen that prompted her to ask for the card. I will give it a try again tomorrow.

Thanks for the response.

I tried to buy a MO from my local Kroger yesterday (I only started getting MOs since RB CC loads died, so I'm just getting my feet wet with it) and told cash only.

Luckily, Meijer has been taking the VGCs all day long for MOs...

Has anyone had any luck at any Food 4 Less in Chicago at all? I have been to most of them (excluding the 3 to the south and east, probably a waste of time to try there), and I can't even buy a $25 Groupon GC purchased alongside regular groceries.

When buying VGC at Kroger, does an AMEX card work without coding as a cash advance? I'm sure this is answered somewhere, sorry for that.

It is coded as a purchase.

Here is a follow up. Dumped one of cards at a Texas based grocery store later same day. Dumped another one another grocery that sells MG for a slightly higher price, no problems. Did a bill pay today at same kroger but used a greendot and a buxx to be safe.

Will do another BP later this week using OVs.

I've been having that happen for months with various clerks. Depends on the store and the clerk. They get the training and some are more into it than others. I've been asked to hand over my cards several times. My guess is most of them are trained to trigger on a request for $500 splits. Perhaps some of them learn the common giftcard bank codes and recognize them when they pop up on their screen. The first six digits of the card identify the company that issued the card. Some will notice the numbers on the receipt. You've been lucky with your stores if you have not run into this earlier.

Someone in another forum mentioned that they purchase multiple visa GC's at Kroger and only get charged the activation fee once. Has anyone else had this experience?

No, $5.95 per GC