Do Bloggers Kill Deals or is it Panicked Readers Who Kill Deals?
Over the weekend the internet was ablaze that you could no longer use a credit card to purchase Vanilla Reloads from CVS.
This led to a stampede at CVS with people buying as many Vanilla Reloads as they could get their hands on. Despite the limit on how many Vanilla Reloads can be purchased by one person a day, there are many ways to get around the $5,000 a day limit.
But it also caused people to seek out alternative methods to manufactured spending, like buying gift cards.
Normally I try to stay out of the fray but a comment by a cashier drew me in.
I was at the grocery store buying groceries and a couple of gift cards. Couple as in two.
The cashier commented, "You people and all your gift cards."
Which immediately piqued my curiosity because the cashier knows me as I shop there often (two teenagers - enough said). And gift cards may or may not be part of my regular grocery shopping.
I asked, "What do you mean by 'you people?'
Cashier: "Oh, some guy came in before you and bought $25,000 in Visa gift cards."
Me: "$25,000?"
Cashier: "Yeah, he would have bought more but that's all we had. Said he was giving them to his employees."
Okay, I play big, but I play smart.
It's actions like this that get things shut down. Not blogs that share secrets or tell you how to game the system. But people who panic and go all out.
As a business owner, it's the big triggers like $25,000 in one transaction that sends a red flag vs 25 transactions of $1,000.
It will be interesting to see if that grocery store stops accepting credit cards for gift cards.
Oh and a little fun side note, he used one credit card to pay for all $25,000 in gift cards. Hope he used one that gave him a grocery store bonus or cash back.
Did you run out and stock up on Vanilla Reloads and gift cards?
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i did not go and purchase any...
Hi Dotti,
I've bought a few. Will be interesting to see if the deal is really dead tomorrow.
Personally I think it's neither. Especially when it comes to manufactured spending, the issue comes with credit card fraud or the fact that a product is unprofitable. Because VRs load limit was increased, I can only assume it was profitable. It came out in the news that 500k of fraudulent charges were run through, which is a more likely explanation of why it's dead.
Hi William,
While fraud may have played a part in CVS changing their policy on reloadable instruments, my post was more about big purchases at one time vs VR specifically. Such as when there was the Home Improvement Gift Card buying frenzy at Office Depot that caused OD to stop selling HIG with a credit card.
People are afraid that they will lose out on a deal so they go big immediately which shuts things down for the slow and steady.
Really old post!