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Update: Office max pulled this deal a day early, ending it on 4/14/17.
Starting today and scheduled to end on Saturday, April 15th, 2016, Office Max and Office Depot will be offering a $15 instant rebate on Visa Gift Card purchases of $300 or more.
The Reported Offer
- $15 instant rebate on $300 or more in Visa Gift Cards
Key Details
- One instant rebate per transaction
- One transaction limit
- Expires Saturday, April 15th, 2017 (if it doesn’t end early)
The Math
This deal is best maximized by paying with a card that earns 5x/5% at office supply stores, such as the Chase Ink Plus, Chase Ink Cash or Amex Simply Cash Plus Business. To maximize rewards and minimize activation fees as a percentage of cost, you would want to buy two $200 Visa Gift cards. Alternatively, you could buy one $100 gift card and one $200 gift card (or any other combination to reach $300 in gift cards), but activation fees will cumulatively make up a higher percentage of your purchase price and decrease or eliminate your profit.
$413.90 (2x $200 Visa Gift Card + activation)
-$15.00
$398.90 + 1994.5 Ultimate Rewards OR $19.95 cash back
These Visa gift cards should be PIN-enabled, with the PIN being the last four digits of the card. For more information on these cards, see our Beginner’s Guide to Buying & Liquidating Visa and Mastercard Gift Cards.
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[…] It’d be best to take advantage of this offer sooner rather than later, as Office Depot / OfficeMax have been known to end similar offers early. […]
[…] have been $15 or $20) is disappointing. However, I’m hopeful that this is a move to avoid pulling the promotion early. I’d rather see negative-cost gift cards, but this is better than paying the full fees and […]
[…] You can also buy more flexible bank gift cards (Visa, MasterCard, Amex). For example, Staples.com sells $300 Visa gift cards for $308.95. That 3% fee is steep, but it can be well worth paying in order to earn 5X rewards. In-store, the best you can usually do is buy $200 Visa gift cards with fees ranging from $4.95 to $6.95. Even better, subscribe to this blog to get alerted when Staples or Office Depot offers discounts or rebates on these gift cards. This week, for example, Office Depot is offering an instant $15 rebate on $300 or more in Visa gift cards! […]
Yes. The offer is DEAD on 4/15/17. HQ pulled the offer one day early.
Confirmed dead on 4/15.
I just returned from my local Office Max where I was purchasing this week’s sweet deal (automatic $15 off $300 purchase of Visa gift cards) although the offer was supposed to go through tomorrow April 15th, the cashier told me as I was checking out that they are pulling the offer early and that it will end tonight. I think I read somewhere that this happened last week with a similar offer for MasterCard GCs which was supposed to go through April 15th but was pulled early. If the information I got is correct it seems strange that they would do this two weeks in a row…. Any idea what’s going on with OfficeMax pulling these offers early?
It appears OD system only allows “cash” for (floral) $500 variable VGCs.
This is what I witnessed:
Cashier scanned a floral $500 variable VGC. Store manager did an override. A warning message popped up saying “blah blah… Cash only”. Cashier hit the OK and entered $500. The only payment option available in the system was “Cash” even cashier entered smaller amounts (e.g. $400, $200, $100).
I ended up buying 2x$200 in two separate transactions.
You have the end date with the year 2016..
From a data point perspective:
* I have had no problem unloading one vanilla visa’s (bancorp) by purchasing MOs at the post office
* And no problem unloading mastercard gc’s- the ones with a picture of a gift on them- (u.s. bank) by purchasing MOs at the post office
It sounds like people are stating that we can unload these as MO’s from walmart. Can anybody else post recent data points on unloading these visa gift cards (apparently metabank)?? I thought I heard rumblings that metabank visa’s weren’t unloading at the post office, but wasn’t sure about walmart.
Thanks in advance.
Where do you buy one vanilla with a credit card?
For myself, I can buy the variable $500 Vanilla Visa cards at my local drug stores (CVS and Walgreens only, not Rite Aid). I use these for money orders at USPS.
Which card do you use to maximize your profit? I don’t recall a good drug store credit card.
If I understand correctly, the 5 backs give you 5% back to the VGC after transaction, and since they are eligible for this promo why wouldn’t anyone want those over the standard VGC?
They only give 5% back at some retailers. You can see the list here:
https://www.fivebackgift.com/
(click the + button to expand and see the full list of merchants)
If you have a use for the cards at those merchants, I agree that they can be advantageous. I believe that not all stores carry them.
Can you get MO at WM Superstore for Grocery / Dining or Style GC?
Ymmv on those varieties. Don’t get stuck with them. Experiment with small amount so you know. Some work and some places while they won’t work at others. Some will work at one register while the same card won’t work at a different register in the same store.
Do the ‘dine anywhere’ visas qualify for this promotion?
They should. I went with Five Back Visas.
Yup. I took a chance and bought the 5 back visas because the regular ones were out. I went to Walmart and got $400 money order.
They do qualify. Although you may or may not be able to be liquidate! I accidentally bought 2 thinking they were 5 backs! Any tips on liquidating? There’s also a “fashion” version…
https://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/1522885
I’ve found that the ‘Dine Anywhere’ work at some grocery stores. The ‘Fashion’ ones work on Costco.com, I buy $200 Costco Cash Cards with them and buy gas there (cheapest gas for miles around, and we shop there a lot).
My store was enforcing a 2-gift card limit: aka one transaction. The regular $200 visa GCs have $6.95 fees, so you’re paying almost $399 for $400 in gift cards, and only making money on the Ink Ultimate Rewards points. A pretty marginal deal unless you’re just driving by the store or your store doesn’t impose such a draconian purchase limit.
There’s better deals regionally than this limited deal. But, some are desperate for UR points due to needing a certain amount to attain the flight they are wanting.
And if you had access to 3 or 4 Office Depot/Maxes, brought your spouse with you, and were willing to buy boatloads of money orders, you could definitely earn enough UR points this week to live on.
Do I recommend you do this? No I do not. But I guarantee you that some people will do it.
You realize that a MO at Wally can take up 4x $200 cards, so there is not a boatload of MOs to buy because in most cases you may just be able to do 2 to 4 transaction per store. That is only 2 MOs per store assuming you can do 4 transactions. Far from being “boatload”.
Buying MO using 2 VGC is hard enough and people want to split it on 4 vgc? Good luck and don’t fumble.
I just got home from doing two transactions. I found variable , up to $500 cards and bought two in separate transactions. Got the $15 off each. Manager rang me up and had no comments or interest in what I bought or my totals. Fee was 6.95 on each. Doubt I will make another trip as they only had six cards total left. They are metabank visa.
What type of payment did you use and at what store, OD or OM? The ODs at my area are hard coded to take only cash or debit for the $500 Variables. Thanks.
I guess he/she used 200 vgc/mgc since 500 vgc is easier to unload than 200 ones
I’ve never seen a $500 variable VGC at my local ODs. Could you please describe what it looks like? Even better if you could post a picture. Thanks.
You can see one here:
https://frequentmiler.com/2015/10/18/officemax-variable-visas/
I’m wondering if people are concerned that Chase and Amx will frown upon about multiple identical or similar transactions if we try to scale this.
My opinion only, I wouldn’t use an AMEX if trying to meet min spend. I know the reports were mostly for the Plat link that leaked out last year but I’m paranoid. I’ve been hitting these deals on my Ink for the past year. I don’t go crazy, the most I’ve done is 6 trips within a week. Mix in other spend on the card; cable, cell, a few other items each month and you should be fine.