A nice OfficeMax trend
Office Depot used to be my favorite office supply store for earning 5 points per dollar with my Chase Ink cards, but they’re now mostly dead to me. Staples is my new everyday, reliable, favorite (see “Staples Rocks”). However, OfficeMax has become a great friend that I like to visit for about a week at a time once a month or so. Why? Check out this roughly monthly trend that I derived from my Quick Deals page:
- 11/29/2013: $20 off $200 MasterCard or Visa gift card
- 12/15/2013: $15 off $150 in American Express gift cards
- 1/19/2013: $20 off $300 in MasterCard gift cards
- 3/2/2013: $15 off $250 in Visa gift cards
Starting with Black Friday, last year, OfficeMax has offered discounted gift cards in-store roughly once a month. The Black Friday deal was only for one day, but the rest of the deals were for a full week. I like this trend! This (and many stackable Staples’ deals) is one of the reasons why the Ink Plus and twin, Ink Bold, continue to be my favorite cards. Don’t forget to take your Ink to OfficeMax this week to take advantage of this week’s deal, but please leave a few Visa gift cards on the rack for the rest of us. I’m still working on the minimum spend for my latest Ink Plus signup (see “Earning points while my better half waits”) and I’m trying to earn 5X for all $5K worth of purchases. That way, I’ll not only get the 50K point signup bonus, but another 25K for spend, as well. Deals like this OfficeMax one are a fantastic way to earn 5X without losing out on gift card fees.
UPDATE: Yesterday I received tweets from people around the country who found that OfficeMax was unable to process the current $15 of $250 deal. Some people found capable managers who were able to manually process refunds, but others weren’t as lucky. Hopefully this issue will be solved soon! In the meantime, Bengali Miles Guru suggests asking OfficeMax staff to call corporate where they’ll be told to give the refund in cash.
#milemadness has begun!
On Saturday, March 1, contestants for the first ever Manufactured Spend tournament began spending their $5K bankroll. You can bet that contestants will be spending a lot of time at OfficeMax this week!
Keep up with the action on Twitter by following: #milemadness. For more details, see:
- The Manufactured Spending Tournament.
- The next mad challenge
- Manufactured Spend Tournament FAQ Post and Thread
- #milemadness Manufactured Spending Tournament meet the Players
- Let the #milemadness Commence!
Players will compete week to week throughout March. Data will be collected from each player at the end of each week and I’ll post scores and summaries of the action each Monday.
New Amex cards earn Membership Rewards
View from the Wing details new Amex cards: Amex Everyday and Amex Everyday Preferred. It sounds like both of these cards are great (but not mind-blowing) additions to the Amex lineup, especially for those who prefer Membership Rewards points to cash. I’ll detail my thoughts about these cards in a future post, but for now I’ll leave you with my two misgivings:
- The cards are credit cards and, as such, contribute to the 4 card limit that Amex enforces with most (but apparently not all) customers.
- I will have to completely re-write my “How to keep your Membership Rewards” post.
Unfortunately, these cards won’t be available to the public for another month or so.
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AMEX has great explanation of all this…….on the Home page of your account click on View All Charge and Credit cards and it will show which ones are charge and which ones are credit……..called AMEX to ask about the 4 card rule and the response was “it depends on your credit profile” so there is no “hard and fast” rule……….hope this helps relieve the cold headaches this topic is bound to bring…………
Thanks!
I have been buying 4 x $200 and getting $45 off at multiple OM everyday this week!!!!!! WooHoo
Bought 3 $200 Visa gift cards today. No problems.
I had the same problem with OM not being about to process the VISA deal. I was able to convince the manager to let me add some printer ink into the purchase and to discount it by $15 for every $250 GC purchase. I was satisfied because I needed the ink anyways.
called two stores and both are out of stocks. bummer, maybe next time
Thanks for the update, tgienger
The deal is fixed now, was able to pick-up $600 in cards at lunch. They scanned their book and the $30 came off.
The $200 cards are the newer ones that aren’t loadable via the MC machines at WM
Went to Office Max this morning at 10am and they still had not fixed the visa deal. They did give cash back, however. If you hear when they get their deal fixed, can put out an update?
On another note, they had hardly any $200 visas…they only had 8 when I got there first thing yesterday…..but they had a ton of $200 master cards after they ran out of those early on last promotion. I wonder if it is poor planning or willful limitation of stock.
I just added an AU to my business Platinum Amex a couple of months ago mainly for lounge access and spending ability. At this point I really need to question keeping that card open. The AF and AU fees are a killer now that there is another MR option out there. Of course who knows what kind of limit Amex would give me on a new credit card at this point. The spending ability might be the only reason to stay right now – and Chase might step up with my Ink Bold ‘internal limit’ to allow me to put business spend on that card.
Looking forward to the updated MR post as well.
Can’t wait for the updated MR post. Will probably cancel both of my MR cards soon and don’t want to transfer out of MR.