Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is happening now! Follow us as Greg, Nick, and Stephen compete to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines before November 23rd. Who will complete the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
UPDATE 11/26/2012: On the weekend of November 10th 2012, Office Depot stopped selling Vanilla Reload cards. As a result, most of the information below is now out of date. See Office Depot discontinues Vanilla Reload cards and The reload game is on.
In recent posts, I’ve shown ways to earn 5X everywhere by buying Vanilla Reload Cards at Office Depot with an Ink Bold card and then loading the money to either an American Express Prepaid card or a reloadable debit card such as the ill fated NetSpend card.’ See ‘One card to rule them all,’ ‘NetSpend challenges the throne,’ and ‘We’re sorry, there is a problem with your account‘ for details.
For this trick to work, though, it’s necessary to find an Office Depot that sells Vanilla Reload cards, has them in stock, and allows you to buy them with a credit card.’ The table below shows what I’ve learned so far from readers regarding each of those points.’ The date shown is not the date of purchase, but rather the date in which the result was reported to me.’ In some cases you’ll see multiple entries for the same city because I’ve entered in data from multiple people, dates, or locations (within the city).
Reader input
If you have experience good or bad with buying Vanilla Reload cards, please report it in the comments below, including the location of the store, and I’ll do my best to keep this table up to date.’ I’m also particularly interested in finding stores other than Office Depot that sell these (or other reload cards) and allow you to use credit cards for the purchase.
UPDATE Nov 8 2012
Ever since Bluebird launched, stores have begun to sell out of inventory more quickly than before. As a result, it doesn’t make much sense for me to keep updating this table – it’s out of date by the time I do so! Instead, please continue to report your findings in the comments below, and use your browser’s search feature to find information about stores in your area.
Also note that since this was written, new stores have been found to carry Vanilla Reload cards. Most notably, some CVS and Walgreens stores carry them and, of those, some allow credit cards. Also see VanillaReload.com and hover your mouse over “Reload Locations” to get ideas of other places to look.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
That’s Bay Area, NoCal only, right? Still not much luck outside of the 3-letter pharmacy down in SoCal. Local 7-11s only accept debit.
@Glenn,
Hi Glenn,
Are you referring to Vanilla Reload Cards?
Did you make this purchase in Norcal or Socal?
Thanks in advance for your inputs.
Confirming beans at local Lucky’s Supermarket in California. No problem buying with credit card.
This is just too much nuisance to get the lousy 60,000 points. OK, so you have enough points for perhaps 2 round trip tickets, but how much time was wasted. You could have taken the time to investigate some good stock investments instead of working with this petty stuff. You have to consider how you are using your time.
Yeah, if you are a loser and have nothing else to do this works to work with this petty stuff.
Frank: I’ve stopped trying to keep this up to date since things change too quickly.
Please update this list but with Walgreens and CVS.
I can’t find any in seattle that will let me.
CVS x2, Valero, Walgreens would not let me use a credit card today.
Thanks!
All the Walgreen’s in Grand Junction and Fruita, CO are no goes! They only take cash, not even debit! Office Depot is a no as well! They pulled all the cards a couple of weeks ago!
I went to the dollar general here and you can but vanilla reloads with a credit card (I’m not concerned as much with points as I am with meeting my spend) but the cashier and manager both could not figure out how to do the transaction. The register kept telling them to swipe the card, but there is nothing to swipe! They tried entering the bar code number manually, but it gave them a declined message. Any advice on what either they or I are doing wrong?
Today I went to the OD at 5300 Peachtree Industrial Blvd, Atlanta GA and I was told that this type of cards have been pulled permanently. bummer!
Can confirm VR is dead at OD. Two DC locations today told me so. I had a blank VR I had saved and it wouldn’t load. Plus they say OD has pulled all VR’s.
Dfw area,3 CVS – none, 3 Walgreens – register said cash only, clerk wont swipe cc
I went to my OD store and was told the cards were killed Nov. 10th. with a memo to remove them from the racks.
I spoke with an OD dude. I have no idea if any of this is true, but he suspected new OD investors who own 12% of the company didn’t like the VR cards. He also said people were buying stacks of them at a time. Noted that people were using them somehow to get cash in areas affected by NY area superstorm Sandy. (I find the last tidbit odd but who knows.)
The cards are gone, they even taken out of the POS system so you can’t load up with blanks at CVS and drive over expecting to use them, LOL. He said the VR cards came up as a ‘sale’ in the OD POS system rather than a ‘gift card’ so they may have been the cause of some accounting confusion.
All the other Vanilla products are there and he said the VR cards may return in the future.
So we shall see. For now I’m buying OneVanilla Visa cards there.
Checked an OD in Berlin, NJ – all out. Found ample supplies at both CVS and Walgreen in Mt Ephraim, NJ, but neither would allow credit card to purchase – both stated cash only
i had the same experience at family dollar as Ajay. the guys at the register had no clue how to use the vanilla reload card and just said “it doesn’t work”
they do have to load up the card right away so i had my bluebird card with me, but they couldn’t get it to load properly. fail.