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This coming Sunday, August 16th, to Saturday, August 22nd, 2020, Staples will be offering $5 off on Visa Gift Cards, with a limit of 5 per customer.
The Deal
- Staples is offering $5 off the purchase fee when you buy a $200 Visa Gift Card from 8/16/20 to 8/22/20
- Direct link to the weekly ad (see page 8 of the 8/16-8/22 ad)
Key Terms
- Valid 8/16/20 to 8/22/20
- In store only.
- Limit 5 per customer per day.
Quick Thoughts
We’ve just recently seen fee-free Visa Gift Cards. It’s a bummer that Staples appears to be testing a deal that’s a couple bucks worse: between the increased “official” limit of 5 per customer per day and this little cost creep, it almost feels like they’re testing to see where the threshold is for points enthusiasts.
This obviously isn’t as good of a deal as fee-free (which wasn’t as good as the old days of negative-cost Visa Gift Cards), but it’s still easy to come out well ahead:
- $200 Visa Gift Card + $6.97 activation fee – $5 off the fee = $201.97 per card
- $201.97 x 5 cards = $1,009.85 spent
- $1,009.85 x 5 points per dollar = 5,049 Ultimate Rewards points (if paying with a Chase Ink Cash card for instance)
Alternatively, if you have the current Amex Offer for 10% back at Staples (up to $40 back) synced on your Amex card, you could come out quite profitable on two $200 cards. There is of course some risk of clawback with Amex, but we’ve not seen them do that on Staples purchases before.
It’s obviously disappointing to pay ten bucks in fees when the cards were so recently fee-free, but the points are certainly still worth more than the $9.85 in fees.
We’ve added this to our current Visa and Mastercard gift card deals.
H/T: Doctor of Credit
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[…] Max has decided to out-do Staples on the gift card front this week. Staples is only offering a $5 instant discount on $200 Visa gift cards which results in you still paying a $1.95 activation […]
Hopefully if they are putting more thought in to it they will also stock their stores with these cards. For the last few promotions the local stores (Bay Area, CA) for us have just had no stock (and that’s on opening on the first day of the promo). None on the racks, in the racks or at the registers.
For me it was a half an hour waste of my time since it’s only 15 minutes away, but I had other things I needed to do and yet the fee free tempted me. They haven’t been restocking. The vendors either have less workers or BH or all and so maybe this chain just isn’t interested and that’s why they are allowing 5 per person. Is Staples slowly liquidating locations that they are going to close? Makes me wonder whether I’ll be done to just one office supply store in the area for me to get needed supplies in which the business can’t always wait for online orders. Businesses still need local supply for some things. Signage and poster printing is an important feature to have close by for some of us. I give my business to places where I can also ms. Thinking I’ll just skip this because I don’t have time to waste and it’s not that good of deal. OM still beats in my area when they actually have a deal to get me in the door.
Has anyone else had problems with unauthorized charges on gift cards purchased at Staples or Office Depot? I’ve had this happen several times recently even though I registered the card and set up my own PIN the same day I bought the cards. I won’t be purchasing these any more. It takes months to get your money back.
If you enjoy 100% fee-free, it’s probably best not to support this promo.