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UPDATE: Unfortunately OfficeMax is now cash-only for variable load gift card purchases.
Many Officemax locations have started to sell variable Visa & Mastercard gift cards which can be loaded with up to $500 each for a fee of $5.95.
Some people have been reporting that the fee only rings up at $3.95 for the Visas. Additionally, it seems like the Mastercard gift cards aren’t ringing up properly yet. (Update: Mastercards are now ringing up properly as of 10/20/15. A $500 card costs $505.95.)
Notes:
- The Visa cards are issued by Metabank and should work at stores like Walmart and Family Dollar as debit cards. Use the last four digits as the PIN.
- The Mastercards are issued by U.S. Bank and have some quirks when loading at Walmart. You can find more info here.
- Rene’s Points is reporting that these cards can be purchased with a credit card such as the Chase Ink which earns 5X points.
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HT: Konorth on Twitter
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Office Mac, and Office Depot now CASH ONLY..,
[…] few weeks ago Officemax once again began carrying variable load Visa & Mastercard gift cards. Better yet, they were allowing these cards to be purchased with credit cards. Since cards like […]
I was able to purchase 4 $500 gift cards with CC Tuesday night. But this morning, the cashsier showed me the “Cash Only for variable load GCs” message on screen while helping to check out. The Cash Only policy is effective 11/1/15 and the system is hardcoded either yesterday or early this morning. Another dream deal is gone.
Yep indeed, it is gone. My OM says the same on the computer when I buy the MC. Cash only now just like OD. We took it by the storm so the storm did do some good damage 🙂
Another user reported that OD/OM were shocked after seeing soooo many $2000 GC purchases paid by CC and decided to enforce Cash Only policy like OD had done before. So glad I got some deals while the storm was on. Two weeks are too short, literally.
No luck at two different OM stores in Michigan today. Register gives message that these are cash only. Both managers were surprised and said that they have not heard anything about a change in policy with Visa/MC gift cards. Looks like this was pretty short lived.
Just went to an OM in Kirkland, they told me that there s a new policy starting today (Nov 1) that over $200 in gift card purchases needs to be cash only… (((
Darn it… I went to one not too far from Kirkland and told cash only going forward… and wondered if it was a new store policy or corporate wide policy. didn’t ask and was going to try the Kirkland one tomorrow. Oh well…
Just a heads up just went to walmart today to load the mastercard gift cards onto bluebird and had no problem last couple days but today would not load, have to call authorizer even after telling them buying a tv it still would not work so just an fyi to all buying the mastercard gift cards ended up buying moneyorders at the post office instead to cash them out.
Data point…morning of Oct 29th….tried to purchase one of the variable MetaBank Visa’s in the newer “festive” packaging shown on top of this article at an OfficeMax (def. was at an OfficeMax, not an Office Depot) in Boca area. Cashier scanned the card and the register said the SKU was “not found”. Manager could not provide any assistance. From what I can tell, looks like the midwest and west regions are the only OM’s that have registers coded for the MetaBank variable Visas. If anyone has success at one of the few remaining OM’s in FL, pls reply with store location.
Correction to my post…the packaging on the MetaBank variable Visa that I attempted to load was “flowery” as shown on top of this article…not “festive”
Please help! Every time I go into family dollar to load a vanilla visa for $500. the register will only allow one load of $500. After that it says fraud alert. The cashier even tried using another Serve card as I have 5 with a completely different vanilla visa for $500. Register said something about Fraud. The store manager thinks her store can only load $500. per day and for no other people! I said that can’t be. We tried another register with a third serve card with a third $500. vanilla visa and it still wouldn’t go through. Please send advise on how to load my Vanillas as walmart won’t take them either. Thank you
There’s a limit with Fam$. You can load $999 at a time. So do $500 first, and do $499 right after. Then you can come back maybe after 15 min then repeat. or go to another store. 1 store cannot do $1k at a time, does not matter how many different serve cards u use or different registers.
[…] to $500) were now for sale at Office Max stores. It’s been covered by Miles to Memories, Frequent Miler and […]
Midwest….about 7 hrs drive from the beautiful Michigan….
Can corfirm MC sales are active at OM today…just bought $4K during lunch break. Loaded one at the WM Kiosk into my BB (all limit I had left) and it went thru w/o a problem
State/region?
I bought the MasterCard version. Has anyone else had trouble loading to Bluebird with these? When I tried WM treats them exactly like they do One Vanilla and it can only be used as a credit card. So these are useless for BB/Serve loads.
If VGC works as debit card at Walmart is there a way to get cash out? If so, please explain. Thank you.
[…] Frequent Miler, you can purchase Visa gift cards at OfficeMax and load them with $20 to $500. There’s a […]
Does not seem to be nationwide 🙁
Doesn’t even seem to be statewide. I checked an OM near me. Nada. Friend got few in another location.