Staples has taken a break from giving us free points: no Free After Rebate items this week. Bummer! However there are a few bits of Staples news and conjecture worth sharing:
- uPromise:
- The Frequent Miler Laboratory team (which is basically me and a reader who goes by the title “lab assistant”) has taken on the task of testing whether one can buy Visa gift cards at Staples.com after going through the Upromise portal for 5% cash back. If this works, then the combination of uPromise and a Chase Ink card will be an awesome way to buy gift cards! Look for an update soon.
- Did you know that you can get cash back from Upromise instead of saving the money for college? Thanks to reader Mow for pointing that out!
- Also, Mow reports having 5% cash back pending from Staples purchases made through uPromise. This could be a great alternative to the Ultimate Rewards Mall 2x for buying future Free After Rebate items!
- Southwest Rapid Rewards
- A reader tipped me off that the Southwest Airlines RapidRewards shopping portal has Staples at 4X until 4/22. If you’re working towards a Southwest Companion Pass, this could be a great way to rack up some points: Go through the portal to buy gift cards and use your Ink card to make the actual purchase. That way you get 5X Ultimate Rewards and 4X Southwest miles! NOTE: unfortunately there isn’t time to test whether gift cards will work here so buy at your own risk.
And, the most exciting news of all: thanks to all of the Staples purchases I’ve been making, I just became even more elite! I am now a Premier member. Feel free to ooh and aww:
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Update. After calling in (last Friday) I got all of my purchases correctly linked. So I’ve now spent$2k. Woohoo staples premier. I guess that pretty much gets me shipping on everything.
@FM – Depends on the source of the $25/$75 and the point of purchase. The 20% coupon can only be used in store, so you either have to use the kiosk from home trick, use a kiosk in store, or purchase from in store stock. In store inventory has become quite scarce and honestly it’s quite impossible to find a store that will have 10 of these in stock consistently.
The free 25/75 coupons that people generated 1000’s of about a week ago no longer work via phone/online and are store only. YMMV because both the 25/75 and the 20% off are not supposed to stack – this will depend on the cashier and what sort of a mood they’re in. Interestingly enough, the staples generated 10/75 may be easier to stack as whenever I hand my smart phone over for them to get the coupon number, the text is too small for them to read the terms and conditions 🙂
Online is a different ball game and requires stacking a lot of other stuff in tiers to make it worthwhile.
@Peter S It’s not the case here, and I am qualifying 2 accounts this year. First has hit threshold and second will this month. Staples is somewhat slow updating purchases and very slow updating premier status.
@FM There are still some FAR possibilities if you do the Staples App game. Using the 20% SW coupon will a little more than breakeven while earning points.
Trend Micro Titanium Max Security (3 user) $69.99 – $60 SER with max rebate of 5. Total = $349.95 – 20% off + 6% sales tax = $296.75 out of pocket. You get back $300 in SER, and additionally earned 5X Chase UR points and your shopping portal of choice.
Stack in a few of the free gifts with $100/$150 purchase like the free flip camera, free travel bag, free laser level etc etc.
Sam_Goh: Thanks for the tips! I expect you could also use the $25 off $75 coupons?
It seems like staple FAR purchases does not count towards Premier Status. I also have $0 dollar toward the status even through I made several FAR purchases.
To get cash back, you need to open a “high”-yield savings account (currently 0.75% APY, which unfortunately does constitute relatively high yield today!). You can also get a 10% bonus to all of your cash-back transfers if you either set up automatic savings contributions to the account of $25 per month or fund the account with $5000. I’ve been using UPromise with the high-yield savings account since November and have earned over $100 so far. I have had no problems with getting the rewards to post (although they do have “pending” status for about 60-90 days). You can always transfer the money back out of the savings into another account too. Now that they have 5% across the board, I’ll be using them more often for stores who give only 1X or 2X on portals like UR.
In theory I should have that elite status in staples rewards. I even called in and had them link my purchses to my rewards number (even though the purchases were already supposed to be linked), and my rewards account still says $0.00 in purchases.
Miler-Just purchased a $100 pizza hut gift card through southwest portal in staples. Our rehearsal dinner is going to be a pizza party before our wedding. Will let you know if points post. Question-in your experience how long does it take points to post in these type of shopping portals? I’m still waiting on macys.com points from chase UR Mall.
In my experience the last FAR run from staples is not the norm so I would caution people about depending on this for spend.
you just became one? come on now, you should have been one several months ago with all the deals! 😉