Dan and his wife Kat are geniuses because they guilt Kat’s parents into giving them money orders, but their plans are starting to be foiled because Walmart has suddenly started sticking them with check cashing fees.

Dan writes:

My wife and I occasionally receive Walmart to Walmart money orders from her parents from time to time. We’ve always been able to cash them at our [redacted] NE Walmart for the full amount with showing our photo ID. Months later, we received 2 more money orders as an anniversary present. We went to cash them today, and apparently their new store policy is to process them as checks, incurring their $3 check cashing fee. In addition to this, the check cashing also requires them to record our social security numbers for this transaction. We inquired why we were charged this fee, considering they already charge a $0.60 money order fee, and their reply was that was how they process all money orders now.

They also gladly informed us that to not incur this $3 fee was to send a money order to ourselves. Really? I’ll send myself money for $0.60? Or to avoid this fee, I could send someone money from “themselves.” They don’t check IDs to make a money order. Anyways, my wife called her mother, and she inquired at her [redacted] Walmart. They told her that our Walmart should not have charged that $3 fee. We also brought that up with our Walmart, and they said they must have not instated that policy yet. This policy at our store went into effect last November, just in time for the holidays. I haven’t bothered to check with other Walmarts, but this sounded fishy (considering one of the Customer Service representatives mentioned how running it as a check was wrong, before she was interrupted by a manager) and I figured it would be worth emailing Consumerist about.

Has anyone else been hammered by these bizarre money order fees?

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