In perhaps another sign of the end of days --

I asked a HT CSR about the disappearance of the high value ($20-$500) variable load cards from racks at several stores. She said order came from corporate to pull those cards, mainly VGCs and MCGCs issued by Metabank.

Edit to add: this was in southeast Charlotte area.

Yes they started to pull them a few weeks ago. I found a store with some a few days ago, but they don't scan at the register. Manager said, that's right there was a memo. Their store had not pulled them yet. All denominations were out at a couple of stores, even $25.

i noticed too. All the reloadits are gone from my store too. this is DC area.

i'm wondering if this has anything to do with HT being bought by krogers recently

I noticed this as well over the weekend. I was home visiting family and went into a HT to see what they had. I was excited to see one $20-$500 Metabank Visa still on the rack as I had been looking for one to try out at various places. Sadly, the card would not scan and the manager was called and informed me that they had been told to pull them all from the shelves.

I lived in Charlotte for 13 years. Charlotte is horrible for MSing. People are too busy mudding to worry about flights and travel

MS has been quite good to me in Middle TN and Northern Alabama.

Ok, I changed it to "Charlotte"

I grew up in NC, so I get your point...

I ran into a major issue with HT rejecting my try to buy high value cards. Then I asked a manager why they pulled all the cards the next time I returned to the store. Apparently HT was targeted by criminals posing as employee's of the GC company. They would call and pretend that they were testing the system. With the test they would ask the register person to scan a value in the card, then once in to give them the barcode number. They said the test worked fine and hung up. What the register worker didn't realize is that the criminals would fabricate the card with barcode and get the value off of it. I was told this, who knows if it is true but for full details I documented it here:

http://thetravelbuddyguy.com/2014/06...ng-gift-cards/

Whenever stores pull GCs, the reason is fraud 99.99% of the time. MSing has very little, if anything, to do with these things.

Strange how different Charlotte is. My area has been pretty good.

On a non-MS trip to HT yesterday, I noticed they had no variable VGC. they always do, so I thought it was curious. Good to know, and quite a bummer. This is in CLT, near uptown.

A few months ago, I tried to buy $100 gift card for a graduation gift. This was at a store that I had bought MANY $500s. The guy at customer service (might have been an assistant manager), said I couldn't use a credit card. He said something happened and that if someone ever disputed the credit card charge, the cash would still be on the card and the store would lose $$. So he was talking about fraud, not MS. Anyway, I thought it was funny because I had bought so many $500s, as well as Reload Its (before they got hard coded) and never had a problem. But I get busted for a $100. This is a store that I frequent for groceries as well, so the guy recognized me and I was friendly and polite. I said it was strange because I had bought another graduation gift earlier in the week and he said that the person shouldn't have sold it to me. Anyway, my son's girlfriend got a Ben Franklin instead of the gift card and I saved $5.95.

I knew something was up about a week ago, when my wife asked if she should pick up some cards while doing groceries. (Answer is always YES!). Anyway she texted me and said there was none, which wasn't unusual. But then she said they were ALL cleared, every denomination. I thought that was strange and I found the same thing at a location next to our house. As I mentioned a manager did say a corporate memo to pull them.

I wonder about sales though. I will be frequenting HT a lot less due to this and giving more business to the stores I can still work with (for as long as that lasts)