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There’s no Visa or Mastercard gift card promotion at Office Depot/Office Max this week but never fear – Staples has their own gift card deal starting today.
The Deal
- Buy a $200 Mastercard gift card with no purchase fee.
Key Terms
- Valid April 22, 2018 to April 28, 2018.
- Limit 1 per customer.
Quick Thoughts
This is a little different to the usual (albeit increasingly rarer) Visa / Mastercard gift card deals from Staples. Those usually offer a rebate, but this is a little more like the Office Depot deals that offer an instant discount.
The terms state that it’s limited to one gift card per customer, but you should be able to buy more than one by purchasing from different Staples stores or on different days (or if there’s a cashier who’s happy to ring them up in separate transactions).
As always, this kind of deal is best maximized by using a credit card that offers a bonus at office supply stores. That includes the Chase Ink Plus (5x Ultimate Rewards), American Express SimplyCash Plus Business and Chase Ink Cash credit cards (both 5% cashback). Doctor of Credit has reported recently that the SimplyCash Plus Business card might not be earning 5% on gift card purchases from Staples or Office Depot/Office Max, so that’s something to be aware of.
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[…] the recent Staples promotion offering Mastercard gift cards with no activation fee, they have a new offer out today on Visa gift […]
This will work towards satisfying that MSR for my CIC but the fact that it is Chase makes me a bit nervous.
What about Chase makes you nervous?
Being shutdown. I guess because this isn’t just a,regular purchases it’s a gc with a cc…Overreacting maybe…
I wonder why this blog article did not mention the dangers of fraud issues reported about some of these type cards? Maybe they haven’t bought any recently?
Because this blog exists to put money in the pocket of its owner. It’s not about being honest with the suckers that fund them.
With UPS ino longer accepting MC’s for money order purchases, does anyone can suggest alternative way to liquidate MC’s using money order?
I can liquidate these at my local Walmart using MO. .88 for a MO. You have to swipe and quick hit the change payment method.
DON’T let the walmart associate hit the enter key until AFTER you switch the payment as mentioned.
Does immediately registering each card in your own name and changing the pin help prevent these from getting drained?
WOn’t really help. Soon as they see you loaded money on it, they can clone the card # onto a physical card and run out to buy something with it. They have all info like account, expiration date, and they’ll correctly guess the 3 digit code eventually.
Purchased 2K of these a few months ago and all but 2 cards that I used immediately got drained. Dont do it!
This has gone on so long I’m simply amazed that they haven’t improved their security procedures. I mean, if you were selling cash gift cards, wouldn’t this problem be on your “front burner”? Not only does it annoy your customers and generate lots of work for your staff, but wouldn’t the bank generally be out the stolen money? Bizarre.
Has anyone tried the deal yet? While I don’t love MCs, I love the “no rebate” aspect, as it’s scaleable without using multiple addresses. I personally don’t like bothering my relatives by sending them my rebates and most of them aren’t 100% reliable anyway 🙂 I just did the Office Depot deal, which was a little better since you could buy 2 cards at a time, they were Visas, and there was actually a small profit on the transaction. But still. This is a great deal, especially since for most folks (including me), there are a lot more Staples than OD/OM. I also wonder if most stores won’t enforce the “one transaction rule” since they will have never seen this promo before.
The downside is liquidating $200 gift cards. I was glad to be done last week. But I find Chase points so useful, I’m willing to be annoyed again.
I’m with you – I prefer these non-rebate style offers. I’m too lazy to go the MO route, but am thinking about picking up a few and using the cards to effectively earn 5x on non-bonuses spend.
Do these Mastercards have the same fraud issues, like being quickly drained, of the staples mastercards?
To be honest, I’m not sure – hopefully someone else can share their experience.
What do you mean? These are the staples mastercards…. Had it happen to me 2 years ago with 2x $200 mastercards. It was a pain to get the money back, but back eventually I did get it.
If they are issued by US Bank, then yes, it’s the same crappy MC with lax security and high risk of fraud. The issue was, and still is, that someone could steal a few blanks from the store, figure out the approximate account range of the cards, and then write a script to continuously check for balance on the website..which has no captcha or other security measures.
Ahh got it, thanks for the info.