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Office Depot / Office Max is back with another promotion on Visa gift cards, this time offering a $15 instant discount when purchasing $300 or more in Visa gift cards.
The Deal
- Buy $300 or more of Visa gift cards and get a $15 instant discount.
Key Terms
- Limit one offer per customer.
- Discount applied at register.
- Offer valid April 8, 2018 to April 14, 2018.
- Offer valid in store on Visa gift cards only.
Quick Thoughts
This is better than the offers in recent weeks as the higher $15 instant discount makes this instantly profitable when taking into account the activation fees.
The only downside is the limit of one per customer. That doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t take advantage of this promotion more than once, but it might involve visiting multiple stores or on different days unless you have a friendly cashier.
As always, there are multiple ways to maximize this Visa gift card offer:
1) Category Bonus
Although the deal’s profitable regardless of which credit card you use, you can maximize your rewards by using a card that offers a bonus at office supply stores. These include the Chase Ink Plus (5x Ultimate Rewards), American Express SimplyCash Plus Business and Chase Ink Cash credit cards (both 5% cashback).
2) Spend More, Earn More
You have to buy at least $300 in Visa gift cards to get the $15 instant discount. However, your best return will come when buying two $200 cards. That’s because activation fees make up a lower proportion of your overall cost than buying one $200 card and one $100 card.
When buying two $200 Visa gift cards, your cost and points / cashback work out as follows:
$413.90 ($200 Visa gift cards x2 + $6.95 activation fees x2)
-$15 instant discount
$398.90 + 1,994.50 Ultimate Rewards or $19.95 cash back
3) Cashback
If you have a card enrolled in Visa Savings Edge (e.g. Chase Ink Plus), you can also earn 10% back albeit with a maximum earn of $5 per enrolled card.
You used to be able enhance your return by earning a limited amount of Office Depot Rewards on gift card purchases each quarter. Unfortunately that avenue’s just been closed, but this deal’s still profitable nonetheless.
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why do 2* $200 instead of 1 $500?
Don’t they carry $500?
Other than Scott’s data point above, I think Office Max / Office Depot stopped carrying $500 cards several years ago.
I just went there and there was a variable load card up to $300. I didn’t try it though based on above dp. I just did 2*$200. The discount worked.
Also, I might have seen older poster, may be, but the one I saw in store was one per transaction, didn’t say one per customer. Could be wrong. I just asked them if I could buy more, she said sure and I did two separate transactions and discount showed both time.
Thanks
Office Max in Tampa had variable $20-$500 Visa gift cards on the rack, so I tried to load one with $300. Everything went fine and the sale went through, but then a notice came up on the register that the card couldn’t be activated. The manager was fairly clueless, but fortunately the cashier read the secondary slip that printed out with instructions on how to credit the sale back to my card. Tried again with a different GC with the same result. (Manager at least had the presence of mind to have all the remaining variable GCs pulled.)
Point being that if you see variable GCs, they probably won’t work, and it’s also not a bad idea to hang around the register for a bit to make certain that there aren’t any activation problems.
Interesting that they have $500 cards – the Office Max that used to be close to me got rid of $500 cards a few years ago.
It hasn’t been possible to buy variable-load GCs at Office Depot/Office Max with a credit card for years. These are cash only. This is not limited to VGCs, either. It also applies to Amazon, Apple, etc. variable load cards.
Only fixed-value cards can be purchased using a credit card. This is why all the bloggers recommend 2 x $200 cards.
I don’t know when the VGCs came back, but as another person indicated seeing them, one has to wonder if someone just found some old stock, or if they will be reintroduced?
As for variable merchant cards (Amazon, Starbucks), you are incorrect. I regularly purchase these with my Ink in multiple locations. It frequently requires a manager override because of the amount, but I apparently do not look like a money launderer and have had zero problems.
That’s not true; I bought plenty of variable-load MGCs and VGCs in the last two weeks.