Expired: Staples: No Purchase Fee On $200 Visa Gift Cards (12/15-12/21)
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Staples is offering no purchase fees on $200 Visa gift cards at Staples stores.
Been a lot of good office supply store gift card promotions lately, but it’s always like this in the busy shopping season. Use a card that earns at a high rate on office supply stores. There is also an amex offer for 35% back at office supply stores.
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@mrvietnam I’m pretty ignorant about why these type of gift cards are “deals”.
Do these purchases count towards the Staples $ spend levels to get to “Premier” status, for example?
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@ukedog They’re only a deal if you need to e.g. consolidate a bunch of small gc OR you have a cc that gives you 5% back at office supply stores, eg Chase Ink. They do not count towards annual “spend”.
Last week (?) they had prepaid MC gc w/o activation fee. I bought 3 @ $200 on Chase ink. Getting back $30 from Chase so effectively a $30MM.
Then took the 3 cards to Shaws supermarket where they had $10 off $100 prepaid visa gc. Activation fee $5.95. Bought 6 $100 visa gc for $4.05 x 6 MM.
So my original outlay of $600 has now netted $54MM.
I will take some of the $100 prepaid visas to Staples next week and buy $200 prepaid visa cards. Some will be Christmas gifts.
I’ll then take the now $200 prepaid Visa cards to WM where I’ll buy $199.12 money orders (88¢ fee for m.o.) and deposit the money order back into checking account before even receiving the bill from Chase for the original $600 for the mastercards.I bought a bunch of prepaid MC w/o fee and used them to prepay the season’s heating fuel.
I used another for car maintenance.
Using them effectively gives 5% discount on the purchase; better than other cc rate but only because I got % back using Chase Ink.In the past we could use up to 4 prepaid cards to purchase one m.o. at WM but they stopped that and limit you to one prepaid per m.o. now. Some stores still let folks use more than one but YMMV. I used to bring all my Staples rebate visa cards to WM to convert them to m.o.
Other folks buy them to earn mileage then convert the cards into m.o. – manufactured spending.
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@ukedog said in Staples: No Purchase Fee On $200 Visa Gift Cards (12/15-12/21):
@mrvietnam I’m pretty ignorant about why these type of gift cards are “deals”.
Do these purchases count towards the Staples $ spend levels to get to “Premier” status, for example?No, gift card purchases do not count towards spending to reach Ptemier.
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Which store do u liquidate these cards for MO? Walmart or some other grocery store? Have you tried loading it to Bluebird? Is it easy at Walmart or they give hard time as well? Thx
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@fatwking Wal-Mart. Some supermarkets do it but none in my area. Bluebird is not allowed in my state so no experience with it or Serve.
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@my4mainecoons Thank you. Some folks were complaining on another website that the MC GC didn’t work for MO at Walmart. They were never prompted for the pin. Not sure if you have to use the red button (cancel) trick for using MC GC as a debit payment.
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@fatwking I only tried to liquidate MC gc at WM once and failed. Since then I’ve just spent them or as above converted back to Visas which are easily converted at WM. There’s something about hitting a button on the WM pin-pad but I never got it to work.
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@my4mainecoons Thx. I am going pay some medical bills with visa next week and then get it reimbursed from my HSA acct. Better than paying directly to service providers and not get anything.
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@fatwking I’m in a rural area with small independent practitioners. They don’t like the prepaid Visas because they have to pay a fee on each card. I presume like the % one pays for accepting any credit card. Dentist’s office person was not happy when I used 7 @ $200. Vet’s office wasn’t happy when I used a bunch of small value visa rebate cards. IMO its not my problem. Larger organizations don’t have a problem with them.
Also, don’t be surprised if store limits you to purchasing just one. I’ve heard that a memo went out to stores. Not all stores enforce it. However, there is a $2k limit. If you buy anything at Staples that’s more than $2K then LP is notified.
Yesterday when I was in store the staff made sure to tell me that prepaid Visas would have no activation fee starting today.
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@my4mainecoons Thx. Did you try using them as Debit cards so that they don’t get charged? Agree, it is not our problem. Is the 2k limit per day? Per week? I don’t buy them in one shot.
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@fatwking No, I didn’t know that they wouldn’t get charged if I used them as debit cards. GTK, thanks.
The $2k limit is per day AFAIK. I buy 8 back to back cuz I like even numbers and because my store lets me. I tried 10 once ($2K) and I can’t recall what happened but we cancelled the 10th transaction.
If other customers get behind me I finish the transaction I’m doing then step aside until there’s no one else waiting. While the numbers don’t count towards Premier or the store’s sales figures per se, scanning Rewards card counts towards the managers’ bonuses. Also, the receipts all have survey codes on them. The store knows who submitted them when 8 perfect score reviews arrive all at once.
