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Update 4/9/19: $300 denominations are back now as well.
Update 4/7/19: Visa gift cards are back, although the $300 denominations are still out of stock for now. This therefore looks like it was just a temporary issue rather than permanent.
Following Greg’s recent post about the top 3 ways to earn uncapped profit buying Visa gift cards, a reader gave us the heads up that both Visa and Mastercard gift cards have been out of stock on Staples.com all week.
Sure enough, each of these cards on the Staples website displays a message stating ‘This item is out of stock for delivery’.
The $300 Visa gift cards in particular were popular with some MSers who have Chase Ink Plus or Ink Cash credit cards, despite them coming with an $8.95 activation fee. That’s because those credit cards earn 5x/5% at office supply stores, so it was still a profitable venture. The largest denomination sold in-store is $200, so being able to buy $300 cards from the comfort of your couch was attractive to some.
It’s not clear yet whether this is just a temporary supplier issue or if it’s a permanent change. The fact that they’ve not removed the Visa and Mastercard listings suggests it’s a temporary issue, although it might presage some kind of other change – perhaps limits on how many can be bought or higher activation fees.
That’s all speculation though, as it might be days or weeks before we know anything either way. We’ll keep checking each day and will let you know if and when these cards make a return to the Staples website.
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[…] week we published a post advising that all Mastercard and Visa gift cards had been out of stock at Staples.com for several […]
just an observation; staples vc are now sunrise in store, while officedm are meta in store . . . just noticed as I’ve been away for a while
Honestly, with both Staples and Office Depot now having frequent in-store sales on Visa and Mastercard GCs (with few enforceable) it’s hard to care whether these cards are in-stock online. Now if they sold these cards with these same discounts online, that would be a different story! But under the current dynamic, it’s rarely wise for most readers to buy online.
A lot of us longtime buyers have been less enthusiastic about the in-store deals because of the decrease of the sale discount amount and therefore have even been shopping less frequently for office supply needs at these particular stores. It’s about time spent and lack of time means I tend to shop where something else draws me. Of course we still have office supply needs for our work and businesses, but we find other places to buy. I don’t care about the online offerings of these, but as someone who has family who’s in charge of office orders for multiple companies we can steer business back to these B&B locations if we see a benefit. We like to bless the branches when we are blessed. There used to be VGC discounts an instant $20 per $300, then it went to $15, then to $10 and we’ve even seen just “fee-free” promotions. After Staples stopped their rebate program we also stopped buying other things there. And we have cards that give a 5% cashback or rewards for office supply. I’m not the only one who feels this way. Now we use other cards/credit to gain rewards so it even effects banks. They and/or the gc vendors are shooting themselves in the foot and we’ll maybe wake up. I feel bad for the store managers.
I have 25 in stock for sale … 🙂
It could be related to the new law in regards to gift cars. The verbiage on the disclosure needs to change, .etc.
This is not new, I have sen it before and it has always come back after a week or so.
I was about to order some today, so I will wait until next week and see what’s up.
This happened a couple of times before with the $300 cards, maybe 1-2 years ago. It was only a matter of 1-2 weeks before they came bag. Fingers crossed.