On Saturday my local CVS informed me that there was a new memo floating around, and that the current $5k daily limit would be pushed down to $2k starting on October 27th. I went on twitter to share this fact to anyone still up at that late hour:
CVS Reducing daily prepaid purchase limit to $2k starting 10/27. Just heard from my go to store. Be Warned.
— Milenomics (@Milenomics) October 19, 2014
More details, including a copy of the letter can be found here with a good writeup from theforwardcabin.
I commented on twitter that for many, many people this isn’t a huge deal. If you’re buying less than $30,000 per month at CVS then this won’t change the amount you can spend at CVS. It does however change the cost to do so. You’ll now have to make 2.5 trips for what used to be manageable in one trip.
There are people for which this is a huge deal. Associates of mine are spending in excess of $100,000 a month at CVS. Their ability to do this is now going to be servery hampered. In addition, by dropping the ID requirement to $300 one of the best worst ways of spending in excess of the current daily limit will seemingly be closed as well.
Oct 27th is *Not* the Deadline for this Change
Yesterday my go to store was fine–I spent $5k without issue. Today however I wasn’t allowed to. The register had already been updated with this new change. I was forced to drop down to $2k. So it seems that some CVS registers have already been updated with this new change.
Just a quick post to let you know things are rapidly developing, and your store may also already have instituted this change. It appears in SoCal the registers are updated. I’m interested if your store is already at the new limit or if you’re still at the old $5k limit, and what region you’re in.
The limit is largely beside the point if you can still buy unlimited quantities of cards in up to 999.99 increments. While the limit per transaction has been updated in some areas, I haven’t heard any reports of id swipe before $1K.
Kenny, academically speaking, you are correct. But, I don’t want to be the test case for how seriously anyone starts to look at structuring. I wouldn’t recommend anyone break up purchases to get around the reporting limit, as that type of smurfing could end bad. Very bad.
Her in west Michigan, the $2k limit has gone into effect, to the surprise of both my stores cashiers. They had no idea about it. So in the process discovered you can still get under $1k without a DL scan. As of today anyways who knows if that will change next week.
GT: Thanks for the data point, and interesting to see that even in the midwest the change has already hit. Be sure to read my reply above to Kenny and consider it appropriately.