Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
Last Wednesday, via my Quick Deals page, I reported that the Visa Savings Edge program now offers 1% cash back on Staples’ purchases of $200 or more. For deal seekers, this is just one more bonus offered by Staples, among many others. Here are some examples:
5% rewards on (almost) everything
With the exception of gift cards, stamps, and savings passes, anything you buy at Staples earns 5% back in Staples Rewards. Rewards can be used toward future purchases at Staples.
5% cash back (or free points) on everything purchased online
Shop through a portal, such as uPromise or ShopDiscover, to get 5% cash back on anything you buy at Staples.com. Alternatively, find a portal offering bonus miles or points. Lately, the 2 miles per dollar has been the norm at sites like the AAdvantage eShopping portal and the Ultimate Rewards Mall. However, there are occasionally short promotions in which the bonus is increased to as much as 6 miles per dollar via some portals. I recommend using CashBackMonitor to find the best rates.
5X credit card earnings
The Chase Ink cards and the American Express Simply Cash card earn 5 points per dollar at office supply stores. These category bonuses are on top of points or cash earned through a portal.
Ink Recycling & 100% Rewards
It’s possible to earn more Staples rewards through their Ink Recycling program or by buying items that offer 100% back in rewards.
Free After Easy Rebate
Staples frequently offers items for “free after easy rebate”. These rebates are great because there is no need to cut up your product packaging and mail things in. Instead, you can simply fill out a very short form online and wait for your rebate. Most rebates come in the form of Visa gift cards.
Coupons!
Staples frequently issues compelling coupons that can be used for a wide variety of items. To get alerted when the best coupons appear, I’d recommend subscribing to deal alerts via SlickDeals or FatWallet with the keyword “Staples”.
Price Matching
Staples’ is generous in price matching to many other retailers, including Amazon.com. Here is what Staples says:
Staples.com will price match prices at select competitors’ websites and Staples’ retail stores. These select competitors are: Amazon, Best Buy, Costco, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Office Depot, Office Max, Quill, Medical Arts Press, Reliable, Sam’s Club, Wal–mart, WB Mason and Xerox. Items must be sold and shipped by one of these competitors.
Plink Rewards
By registering your credit card with Plink, you can earn up to $3 in Plink points per transaction at Staples (up to 10 transactions per 30 day period). For full details, please see “Plinking Staples.” UPDATE: Plink no longer offers points for Staples’ purchases.
Visa Savings Edge
Visa Savings Edge is a program for Visa small business cardholders. Simply register your business Visa card and you’ll earn cash back automatically when you make a qualifying purchase at a number of stores including Staples, Sony, Lenovo, Days Inn, Chevron, and more. At Staples, you must make a purchase of $200 or more to qualify for 1% cash back. The best Visa business cards that I can think of are the Chase Ink cards (which were issued as Visa cards beginning mid 2013) and the Club Carlson Business Rewards Visa.
American Express Sync Offers
Occasionally American Express offers cardholders cash back for making qualifying purchases at certain merchants. Currently there is a targeted offer for $25 back from a $100 purchase at Staples. Log into your account and check the “Offers for You” tab to see if you were targeted. Then, read the following posts to learn how to get the most from these offers:
- Maximizing Amex Sync offers. Part 1: sync multiple cards
- Maximizing Amex Sync offers. Part 2: extreme savings
- Maximizing Amex Sync offers. Part 3: shopping elsewhere
- Maximizing Amex Sync offers. Part 4: forget shopping, get points and cash for free
Gift cards galore
Staples has a large selection of gift cards both in-store and online. Yes, you can take advantage of almost all of the above deals when buying gift cards!
Product selection and sales
Staples’ product selection improved quite a bit recently when they added Apple products to their selection. Staples prices are not always that great, but they do frequently run amazing sales on particular items. As with coupons, I’d recommend subscribing to deal alerts via SlickDeals or FatWallet with the keyword “Staples” to find out about these deals.
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[…] (5X with Ink cards!), and it sells gift cards online, the possibilities are nearly endless (see “Staples Rocks” and “Best ways to buy $200 Visa gift […]
[…] Ink cards are now all issued as Visa cards, so you can register them for Visa Savings Edge. Read here how to maximize this with Staples, and how it will help you reach your spending threshold. […]
[…] Ink cards are now all issued as Visa cards, so you can register them for Visa Savings Edge. Read here how to maximize this with Staples, and how it will help you reach your spending threshold. […]
[…] Staples Rocks (see why we care about gift cards from Staples) […]
Just got an email that Plink’s Staples offers will be expired on 3/11, 2014…
Yeah, But Office Depot is up next starting on 3/12/14
[…] Link – Frequent Miler […]
Brandon I was able to register with no issues
hello frequent miler, can you please confirm that buying visa gift cards @ staples (both in store and online) will result in visa saving edge 1% cashback? thanks a lot.
Yes, confirmed, as long as each transaction is $200 or more.
I love Staples as you can really rack up the points with an Ink card. After using the coupons for the week, you can usually get paid to take paper from them. The only hard part is figuring out what to do with a couple cases of paper ever few weeks.
Donate them to schools. My wife is always complaining that her school is always running low on paper.
Are you sure you can register an Ink card with Visa Savings Edge? In your Quick Deals post about it, one commenter said he had trouble with that.
Yes, the same commenter later posted that when he tried again it worked.
Last week Staples customer service refused to price match HP on a new printer I wanted to purchase. The reason they gave is that HP has no Store. I told them of course not, neither does Amazon. They refused to budge so I went ahead & purchased with HP using the AMX Open discount. Otherwise, I have never been refused a price match by Staples with most of the vendors mentioned. One caveat on Amazon; Staples will only price match if it is sold and shipped by Amazon. If it is sold by a third party and shipped by Amazon, Staples won’t price match, even when it is shipped Prime. Hope this helps some of your readers.
So can you Buy Staples gift cards and get the AMEX sync bonus……..??
Yes definitely
Kool….I am off to Staples with 2 different AMEX cards and then will return to buy the Nordstrom’s items thru the Ultimate Rewards mall………cheaper and more miles than the military PXs even with taxes………
I play the Staples game. Just to add for rebates, you get visa gift cards for any item that you purchase with a value over $10. Under that they mail checks. 4 x 9.49=$37.96 but still a check. You better have a plan of what to do with the visa gift cards, because you will be getting lots of them all the time, and they do not have a debit function I’m told (they recently switched to them).
Thanks David
These Staples debit cards sucks. There’s no good way to get back the money, and they are chockful of fees after 6 months! So absurd to pay a $3 monthly fee on a Staples-Evil-Rebate debit card of $29.95 on photo paper!
I used mine by paying down my mortgage via Evolve Money. Worked perfectly
Hi FM,
How did you resolve the issue where your bank (I believe WF), applies all payment to principal? Thanks in advance.
I haven’t resolved it yet. Just today I managed to use evolve to submit exactly the right amount for my monthly payment (by using several log-ins). I’ll have to wait a few days to see if WF treats it as a monthly payment or not.