I travel a lot and one thing I’ve noticed is that I can find Vanilla Reload cards in smaller cities easier than I can in my home town. There are two particular small-ish cities where I’ve never had trouble finding Vanilla Reloads at a particular 3 letter named drugstore. Once I find them I use the Vanilla Reloads to load funds onto my Bluebird® by American Express and make everyday purchases.
The first city is Nashville and the surrounding areas. I’ve never had trouble finding the Vanilla Reload cards. Whether they are in the gift card rack, or next to the register, they are always present.
The other is Tampa. Now there are several stores within a 5 mile radius of the airport. They’ve always been stacked with Vanilla Reloads. Just last month I visited a few while I was handling some business around the city, and at each one I was able to pick up enough for my purposes. Have you ever had any trouble locating Vanilla Reloads in Tampa? If not, I bet that is about to change.
Here’s a prediction, one of these two cities will not have very many Vanilla Reloads after this weekend. Can you guess which one? Dare to share what are your go-to cities for finding Vanilla Reloads?
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The Weekly Flyer writes about travel from a business traveler perspective. He travels the world every week accumulating points and miles along the way.
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When driving down the Florida Keys from Key Largo to Key West the three letter drugstores have ample supplies of VR’s and all are aware of the latest $5k per month rules.
Don’t worry about mentioning Nashville, there’s no one here that cares whether the VR supply dries up or not …
It is becoming incredibly difficult to find them in Columbus, OH. Went to four today including my usual go to and nada. Doesn’t even look like people are hiding them as I search through all the similarly colored gift card racks. The 5k limit daily by CvS has actually made it harder.
Tampa will be cleaned out after FTU this weekend!
John Guide, three letter drugstore $5K per month rule?! I thought it was a $5K per day rule (well, it better be). The Weekly Flyer, I’m curious, what is your home-town?
Live in San Diego. Couldn’t find any VRs even after spending a couple hours going to TEN CVS a few weekends ago. OK, I found ONE VR which I promptly maxed out to $500. Now I’m seeing more as we hit the end of the month, obviously since people have maxed out their $5,000 cap. Funny thing, spoke to a manager at CVS asking him when he’d be getting more in. He said they disappear the day they get them in. Said he has personally witnessed people shoving them into their pockets and even one guy had the balls to ask him if he could take a bunch to use later. Shockingly he said no big deal, they’re not worth anything unactivated, they can take it. I said that’s still lifting merchandise out of your store. He was like whatever. A cashier at another CVS 2 days ago, clearly irritated, said “what do you even use these for”. I just said to pay bills. Asked him “do you get others buying these?” Literally rolling his eyes, he said “all day looooooooooonnnng!”
Has the VR packaging changed? I don’t see any in the picture in your post.
@Simon,
They’re behind the shampoo on the right
Kent – You are very observant. That is exactly where I found them 🙂
Minnesota has been BONE dry! In a week’s time, 8…EIGHT of the stores went from having easily 100+ each to empty racks no matter where I turn.
ATL hasn’t been kind to me lately. Had been having pretty good luck for MONTHS, but the last few weeks I’ve run dry at all my usual stores.
VR did show up my usual gas station for the first time, but they were the reload in the store type and were cash only, as were the One Vanilla cards they had on the rack. I got really excited about finally maxing out my Freedom quarterly bonus, but it was not to be at that time.
Very few in SF area……..but confess I have 4 more hidden……It is sad to have to revert to this hoarding but my addiction is in control…………and my friends at Charlie Victor Sierra are very sympathetic to my plight……
Many CVS’s are resorting to CASH ONLY/debit card transactions only. I suspect many Tampa CVS’s will go Cash Only once people start buying many of them and raise suspicion to the clerks/store manager
What credit card is best to use for these cards these days? With Hilton’s devaluation do you use your Ink Plus?
Las Vegas is sold out everywhere and the few that do, only take cash.
The CVS in L.A. (actually West Hollywood) at Santa Monica & La Cienga usually has them, and I had no trouble buying them with a credit card. I only buy one at a time and don’t hide them. Don’t be greedy, people… you’ll mess it up for everybody.
The places I go to in TX are either dried up or have loads of VRs… but the places with VRs are cash only.
@Brandon. My bad. I meant $5k per day.
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area where it seems finding Vanilla cards is becoming more and more of a challenge. However, I do have a couple of places where I can go and they always have the cards available. Now why would I share and dry up my pool?!?
Jacksonville has a few good CVS stores that are stocked and take credit cards.
Thank you to all the greedy people (or should I call them something else?) who wiped out ALL of the Vanilla Reload cards at the Sequoia Station location in Redwood City. The store display looked just like the picture above, except for the empty slots where the Vanilla cards go.
Just do what I did at my Charlie Victor Sierra store in Marin. I walked the manager over to the gift card rack and pointed to the UPC code and asked him to scan it and reorder the cards. He gladly did so……..then it brings more joy to all of us (whether we hide or not)!