{"id":7467,"date":"2023-04-25T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-25T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=7467"},"modified":"2023-04-24T23:14:09","modified_gmt":"2023-04-25T05:14:09","slug":"safeways-new-money-order-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/25\/safeways-new-money-order-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Safeway&#8217;s New Money Order Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Introduction<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>My first report of <a href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/IMG_3266.jpg\" class=\"ek-link\">Safeway&#8217;s new money order policy<\/a> came from CharlesA on Tuesday of last week when he spotted the now infamous sign at a Safeway in Arizona, and quickly thereafter reports from other states confirmed the updated policy. The sign and its corresponding memo clearly came from the corporate level and <a href=\"https:\/\/milesperday.com\/2023\/04\/safeway-will-no-longer-accept-vgc-for-money-orders\/\" class=\"ek-link\">it appears to be at the behest of Western Union<\/a> (but my guess is that Western Union is a scapegoat, not the instigator.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Past<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s the thing, this has happened plenty of times before at plenty of chains, a few examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flyertalk.com\/forum\/32499663-post3.html\" class=\"ek-link\">Publix in 2020<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/imgur.com\/lkpIKGK\" class=\"ek-link\">Kroger in 2016<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flyertalk.com\/forum\/30601930-post1.html\" class=\"ek-link\">2019<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flyertalk.com\/forum\/32883822-post2976.html\" class=\"ek-link\">Walmart in 2020<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/milesperday.com\/2017\/11\/usps-sends-memo-regards-money-orders\/\" class=\"ek-link\">USPS in 2017<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Future<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Every single one of those stores still sells money orders purchased with a gift card, and I sincerely believe the same thing will happen at Safeway because:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>It&#8217;s not hard coded<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Staff turns over<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>8\u00bd x 11&#8243; sheets of paper wear out quickly<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Other important policies will take precedence<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Some employees just DGAF<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Workarounds<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, always be probing. In the mean time though, you can still get purchases through with above board and\/or ethically questionable techniques like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Using a gift card inside of a mobile payment app<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Using a real debit card when you&#8217;re asked to show a card<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Sourcing gift cards that don&#8217;t look like gift cards<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flyertalk.com\/forum\/manufactured-spending\/1720584-magnetic-strip-reader-writer-encoder.html\" class=\"ek-link\">Playing games<\/a> with mag-stripes <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Buying non-obvious money order amounts so cashiers don&#8217;t check<br>(maybe $496.40, then auto-draining the rest on left over valentine&#8217;s candy at the register?)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Good luck and happy Tuesday! (Thanks to Nathan for the linked policy photo)<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-editorskit-rounded\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image-11-768x1024.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7475\" width=\"420\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image-11-768x1024.png 768w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image-11-225x300.png 225w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image-11.png 1080w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">Good (?) news: these things cost exactly $3.60 including tax.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Introduction My first report of Safeway&#8217;s new money order policy came from CharlesA on Tuesday of last week when he spotted the now infamous sign<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[53,12,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gift-cards","category-ms-hints","category-shenanigans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7467"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7478,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7467\/revisions\/7478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}