Oh, yeah - terrible, terrible loss for them when all the MSers take their highly-valued "business" elsewhere.

Hilarious.

They make $0.00 in gift card sales. They actually lose a good bit due to promotions.

Yes, they make nothing in GC sales, but it's not uncommon for an MSer to pick up something they need in a store while while they MS, even if it's just a soda.

Same here in Boston, I wasn't allowed to use a credit card to buy PPMC cards.

Was register hard coded or did CSR stop you before you tried?

Any other PPMC data points?

CSR stopped me before I tried. Actually CSR called the shift manage and he stopped me.

I haven't even tried since the reports rolled in. No point in it.

Rite Aid said I can only buy a gift card with cash
 

So today I went to Rite Aid and attempted to buy 2 Nike gift cards for $25 each and was told I can only pay cash for it. Not a credit card, not a debit card, just cash and only cash. I know this is the case for some prepaid gift cards and other cards that serve as 'cash' but paying cash for a regular store gift card? Has anyone else experienced this or know what I was told this?

I always buy gift cards there and have never had a problem in the past, the cashier I always go to was away for vacation so I went to someone new (not a new employee, just someone I don't go to to get checked out usually). I didn't make a fuss out of it or say anything because I didn't know if this is an actual policy and if the cashier I usually go to was just doing me a favor by always allowing me to buy them with a credit card in the past, so I didn't want to say she always does it if it would have got her in trouble.

Moderator action
 

Welcome to Flyertalk.

I have transferred your question to the Manufactured Spending forum where you are most likely to find others who buy gift cards (of various types) at pharmacies including Rite Aid.

See this thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/manuf...er-thread.html

Hard coded for cash only, has been covered extensively.

No it hasn't been covered - the policy only applies to open loop variable cards. You can/should be able to buy a $25 Nike card or even a $50 Vanilla Visa Gift card with credit.

Charged the Activation Fee
 

Haven't been on FT for awhile, went to Rite Aide on Saturday and we tried running it, but it only charged the activation fee to the card. We voided the transaction, but today I noticed that the activation fee was still charged.

Sad to see this one go, we've been mostly running with WG and like to have some other options.

Debating on waiting a few days to see if the charge is reversed naturally, calling Rite Aide to have them reverse it, or disputing the charge. It's on my AE OBC and I'd rather not have AE looking deeply into my activity at pharmacies. Any advice?

If you don't get the refund, it would be better to go back to the same Rite Aid with a copy of your statement instead of disputing a transaction, which can only hurt the merchant.

Worst case, just let it go. Only $5.

Interesting story. I also had a charge from RiteAid from a transaction that I cancelled. I thought it would drop off too, or that they would notice it and fix it, but they didn't. I did go back to the RiteAid store with the statement, and they suggested I do the dispute. I wanted to give them a chance to fix it, so I asked them to research the problem. A week later they came back and said they could find no record of the charge. So in the end I had to dispute after all. I am still in the merchant response period, but I don't really anticipate any problems.

RA is dead to me. This thread should now die because RA only seems to want cash ml type customers. Allowing CC customers to buy gcs means having a paper trail of who the cc belongs to. Cash is basically untraceable, but corporate doesn't think in those terms. If they would have waited a bit they would have seen most of the gc buying diminish anyhow because of certain 5% category methods vanished. And, if they would have imposed limits and scanned DL that would have also prevented some of their supposed issues. Haven't bought any medicine or anything there since June. I shop where I can also use cc to buy gcs. No cc, no business from my family.