Yesterday I shared hints to help you find two gas stations that I found sell Vanilla Reloads with credit cards so you can reload your pre-paid cards to make everyday purchases. Well, we’ve done it again. We’ve found yet another, unpublished gas station that sells VRs to patrons and accepts credit card as payment. Vanilla Reloads are not dead indeed.

Here’s the background and one important helpful hint that has a few clues for you to follow the trail.

Vanilla Reload At Gas Stations

Once CVS went cash tender only, I realized there was still another work around to use Vanilla Reload cards to load my Bluebird, but it required an extra step that I explained in this previous post.

I’m not part of the manufactured secret handshake club, and I don’t have time to scour the message boards between work and family. So I went about it the old fashioned way, a little work and a little trial and error. But if you look close enough, there are a few clues that you can use to figure out the brand of stations that sell from my experience.

I found VRs on two previous trips down south from my home town. This trip was north and not in a car. But I was able to take the rental car to stop by a few gas stations and check out the local inventory. I’d like to call it a market assessment if you’ll humor me.

Why Do I Care About Vanilla Reloads

Vanilla Reloads enable you to reload pre-paid debit cards like a Bluebird account from American Express. Then you can use the pre-paid debit card for everyday spending for items like Rent, Mortgage, Car Payments. Turns out this is also a great way to earn bonus points or miles on your credit card. In addition, if you are trying to meet minimum spending requirements to get the signup bonus offers, it can help you get to the spending requirement faster.

Not to mention, that if you purchase Vanilla Reloads at specialty stores you can earn bonus points. There are plenty of cards that offer bonus spending for purchases at gas stations or just good cash back in general like the following:

Flexible Points

• Ink Plus® Business Credit Card earns 2x points per dollar at gas stations each year up to $50,000

Cash Back

• U.S. Bank FlexPerks® Business Cash Rewards Visa® Card earns 3x cash back on gas
• Discover it® earns 5x bonus cash back on rotating categories (gas is a bonus category from July to September) on only up to $1,500 in purchases

Vanilla Reloads At Gas Stations

The first step is to be familiar with the stores that actually sell Vanilla Reloads. You can find this by going to Vanilla Reload site. Do this first.

Once I was armed with this information, I set on our a recent trip to check out the market in the southern city I was visiting. Turns out they are everywhere around here. So if you live in this state, you are in luck.

Where I Found Vanilla Reloads At Gas Stations

It didn’t take long. I actually passed a number of these stores before I stopped to check out the inventory. At the first stop I had great success!

Confirming again that Vanilla Reloads were not dead, I picked up 1 card and asked to load it with $500. There was a slight problem. The cash register lady immediately said, “cash only” to which my reply was simply “are you sure?” She said, I’m not, let me check. She went back behind the counter to read a piece of paper, looked like instructions on how to process the transaction, and she came back and started the swipe process to load the card. She didn’t confirm that they accepted credit card payment, but after she finished the swiping process on her side said “ok, go ahead and swipe your card,” so I knew we were good to go.

I then repeated the process at other stores around town. I mean, they are everywhere.

Click on the photo below to find a clue.

Pay particular attention to the bottom left road atlas and the logo on top of the card station (which can be compared to the available stores on the VR website to connect the dots).

Bottom Line

Vanilla Reloads are certainly not dead. I found two and shared the locations with you in this article. Then just yesterday, DeltaPoints found another one here but farther up north in the Midwest. As you can see, there are several markets where these can be found. It is certainly not dead, but I’d say it is more of a local market game now.

Good luck!

Related Posts

• Vanilla Reloads Are NOT Dead
• How To Load Bluebird With Gift Cards
• Major Change to Vanilla Reloads at CVS- Cash Only
• Vanilla Reload Update- Now Going to Cash Only on April 4th

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