No More Vanilla Reloads With a Credit Card at CVS From March 31, 2014

Million Mile Secrets

11 years ago

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Update: You can no longer load a Vanilla Visa to your Bluebird.

Via Points Miles and Martinis, you might not be able to buy Vanilla Reloads with a credit card at CVS after March 31, 2014.

Some CVS stores don’t accept credit cards for Vanilla Reloads, but this looks like a new policy which is applicable at ALL CVS stores. We all knew that this day was coming!

Is This the End of Our Romantic Shopping Trips to CVS?

Why Is This Bad?

I’ve written about Vanilla Reloads and how you can use them to load your Bluebird account and pay for expenses (mortgages, rent, credit card bills etc.) you wouldn’t otherwise be able to pay with a credit card.

Many CVS stores let you buy Vanilla Reloads with a credit card. But this news might mean you can’t buy Vanilla Reloads with a credit card anymore!

Cary Chaney who wrote the above memo is the category manager for prepaid cards at CVS, so this looks like it is the real deal. Most shops don’t let you buy reloadable cards with a credit cards, so it was only time before CVS changed their policy.

What Should We Do?

We won’t know for sure if this is real (or an early April Fool’s joke!). But in case it’s not, it could be worth maxing out your Vanilla Reload spending on March 30, 2014 (today) just in case.

I’m not in the US, so I can’t head to a CVS to personally verify the change. So apologies if this is a false alarm for some folks! But it sounds like CVS might be tightening their rules.

That said, you can still buy $500 Visa gift cards (with a PIN) and go to Wal-Mart to load your Bluebird. So Bluebird is not dead…yet! But it certainly is more inconvenient to go to Wal-Mart than it is to load your Bluebird online.

Bottom Line

You might not be able to buy Vanilla Reloads with a credit card at CVS from tomorrow. I’m not sure if this is regional or applicable at all CVS stores.

If you’re near a CVS tomorrow, you could stock-up on Vanilla Reloads. Hopefully, this is a false alarm. But if not, this will change the way lots of folks meet minimum spending on their credit cards. But check out these other ways to help with the minimum spending requirements on credit cards.

I have my fingers crossed!

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