The Offer
Weekly ad page
- Next week Staples are offering $10 off a $50 Hotels.com gift card
The Fine Print
- Valid from 3/26 until 4/1
- Valid in store only
Our Verdict
Keep in mind that Staples is an office supply store, so you can earn 5x points as well by using a card that earns at a high rate on those purchases. Card doesn’t say there is any sort of limit, anybody know if that’s actually true or if it’s limited to one per customer? 20% discount + 5x is very attractive for me. Stacking with Hotels.com makes it really amazing, I’ve written about it before in this post here.
Hat tip to DDG
BTW, if you did buy the cards, sign up for their online newsletter. They sometimes (like last week) offer subscribers codes that are a little better than the public ones, and you have to click through their link. Last week’s code was good for 12% off (some subscribers received only 11%, but if you had the link the better code worked for 12%).
It’s not rocket science to conclude that if you’re effective buying $50 hotel gift cards for $38 (20% off, and then 5% off with Ink), and then getting a 12% discount off those rates, that there are some very worthwhile hotel deals here.
This was a really weird promo on several fronts. First, online, it seemed that Staples didn’t really want to sell too many of these. How do you go “out of stock” on an online virtual gift card? I guess hotels.com only wants to issue so many, which is a little weird, but I guess could be a reasonable business strategy.
Second, buying in stores was weird. The stores I usually frequent were completely sold out by Monday. According to one store manager, somebody literally went around town buying up all the gift cards! Each store started with 10, and in less than a day, each store had zero.
It turned out I needed to go to a nearby town, 25 miles away, and I popped into a few stores and bought a couple dozen. Each store had no more than 10, and the staff universally told me that NO ONE had been asking for the cards this week! This corresponds with the very little buzz this deal got in the travel and deal forums. I would submit that, if you have an Ink card, this was a VERY good hotel deal for many people. But not many people knew about it, which was good because there weren’t many cards to actually buy!
If I could have gotten to a store, I’d have easily bought them out as would many other people. I think Hotels.com wants to kind of avoid selling to bulk buyers like me, because they know I’m spending the money with them regardless of the discount. Surprise they don’t just limit to one online tho.
Is there enough savings for you without the extra 20 (or 25) percent?
I’m not a huge fan of the traditional online travel agencies, unless the discounts are over 30%. And then there’s still a bit of a hassle finding the properties that are actually eligible for the discounts.
I do think these types of discount benefit VERY frequent travelers, though. Like for your next trip, it’s hard to know whether having hotels.com money will be useful. But if you travel a lot, you’re going to find a place where deeply-discounted hotels.com money will result in a nice savings.
> Is there enough savings for you without the extra 20 (or 25) percent?
With the rewards program and portal cash back, yes. I don’t really value status with hotels though (e.g I rarely if ever eat breakfast there and don’t really care for upgrades).
What is the best resale rate on these hotels.com gift cards?
Cardpool only pays 55% of face value.
Not sure, I never resell just use them
Will online purchase at staples.com trigger the 5x bonus points using Chase Ink?
Yes
Yes
Yup, still “out of stock” on-line – but rather confusing. At first, it lists just fine, but you don’t discover it’s out-of-stock until you try to put it in your cart. (wish they would just say so up front)
By the way, has anybody been able to buy the $300 Visa Gift Cards via Staples.com (on-line). I’ve been trying for two weeks, but keep encountering one version of the other of the “we’re sorry…. out-of-stock” message. (usually not until after I try to place in cart)
I have seen some indications (via FT thread) that it may come back in stock (but only for a moment, then the moment’s gone)….. Just hope this Staples $300 visa card doesn’t become but “dust in the wind”
Went today to 4 Staples around me. They didn’t have any Hotels.com GC in stock. They even checked inventory from other stores, nothing in stock….nice promo! ehhhh
Wtf
BTW manager told me to stop by tomorrow, if they won’t have any in stock, he will honor e-gift cards and manually take $10 from each. Will report back tomorrow..
What happened? Did they have any in stock? If not, did the manager honor $10 each e-gift card, and was there a limit to how many cards you could buy?
You snooze, you lose.
Store I went to had at least 30+ gift cards in stock.
Flyer said in store only but staples.com had $50 ( Email Delivery) for $40 after 12 midnight Pacific. Discount was limited to 10 cards per order, but could do multiple orders. Did 20 orders. Surprised nobody else was ordering (my order numbers were mostly sequential). Currently OOS but might return.
Can you provide the link to the item? I can’t find it in search, probably because OOS. Thanks
@Justin, here’s the direct link:
http://www.staples.com/Hotels-com-Gift-Card-50-Email-Delivery-/product_2633998
$10,000 in Hotels.com gift cards? What’s your plan to use/liquidate?
Personal use (self, friends, family). 20% staples GC discount + 5x CC rewards + hotels.com 10% coupon (or free nights) is hard to pass up. Not to mention the portals sometimes pay out for GCs. YMMV. The only real downside I think is you can’t transfer GC balances to exceed $2K, and you can only use 1 GC per reservation, so you need to break up reservations that would exceed $2K.
I would buy more if I could resell but there are few options. For example, few sellers are allowed list hotels.com on raise.com. Presumably for security reasons, but I would think hotels.com are among the most secure GCs you can buy in the secondary market due to the ability to transfer balances. More than likely it’s raise.com insulating favored bulk sellers from competition, essentially giving them an exclusive.
FWIW, the $50 egc at staples.com have come back sporadically. I saw them last night around 2AM pacific. I was tempted to buy until the cows came home but sound mind prevailed. They are OOS again. I’d be happy to offer some at cost if anyone is in a pinch. Most people know where to find me.
I travel a lot of work, so $10k in Hotels reservations goes fairly quickly.
Thanks a lot for letting us know!
Bad that I haven’t read it earlier, would love to buy some but cannot go in store as I am currently abroad.
I don’t have Ink but still 20% off (+2% CC CB) is a superb offer!
Fingers crossed that they would appear in stock today again 🙂
Bummer- just read this on the top cashback portal site…
“Please note; cash back is calculated on the value of the transaction after gift card redemption” and on the BeFrufgal site, “No cash back on purchases with gift cards applied as payment.”
Anyone know if this is actually enforced? Also curious about why this is the case? Why do they care how they are paid?
Last month I used TCP as portal and paid majority of my booking with Hotels.com gift card (also 20% off from Amex offer) and I got the cashback although it is less than 9% because the system reported the amount of total transaction slightly less than the actual amount. It is way better than nothing.
Yes it’s enforced and they care because they sell the GC at a discount sometimes like this promo.
I have always received full CB from the above mentioned portal despite paying completely with gc.
Wait- this is almost too good to be true! Did I get this right that I can save 20% on giftcards + earn 5x (chase ink) + use the purchase to qualify for hotels.com free nights AND use a portal for an additional 9X cashback?!
I have been trying to figure out a way to save on my upcoming trip to europe. For 4 nights in San Sebastian, Spain, I am trying to book 4th night free with citi prestige, but the reservation is pending (calls back and forth between concierge and hotel), If this hotels.com deal is as good as it looks (an my math isn’t way off) this would be a way better deal than 4th night free!!!
Total for 4 nights Hotel De Londres y Ingleterre 1775
citi prestige 4th night reduction (-$425) 1350
Versus
Using hotel.com gift cards at 20% off (-$355) 1420
cash back portal 9X (1775x.09= $159.75) 1260.25
I know I will be saving even more by using my chase UR points. I think they are worth about .018 based on using the points for free nights at hyatt Vendome in Paris ($553/night or 30K points) I suck at math, so don’t know how exactly to compute the additional savings here . . . anyone want to explain that? My computations came out to only $25 value in UR points value after spending $1440 on Ink at staples. That doesn’t seem like enough . . .
On top of all the savings, I would be 4/10 nights away from a free hotels.com night as well! This is quite a bargain!
If someone is willing to help me figure out the chase ink UR amount, I would be delighted! All in all, I think this is a better deal than 4th night free in my situation- Of course this would require me being able to find 36 $50 hotels.com gift cards at staples . . .
LindaM
If you spend $1440 at staples your UR should be worth roughly between $72(1cpp) and $108 (1.5cpp)
Thanks! That’s not bad at all!
Can Hotels.com GC be used towards the 10th night free nights?
If your question is whether a cash booking paid for with a GC will count as one of the 10 nights towards the free night, then yes.
If your question is whether you can use Hotels.com GC towards the cash balance of a night booked using a free night, the answer is yes.
Seems like if it’s in-store, even if it’s limited to one per customer, you can go back to the store multiple times. Another relevant question: how many gift cards can you use at Hotels.com for a single booking? I have not used the site before so don’t know.
You can combine multiple gift card balances into one. Follow this link: https://www.hotels.com/deals/gcbalance/. Once there click on “Balance Transfer” tab. This way you will be able to use as many cards as you like.
You can combine multiple Hotels.com GC into a single GC, so unlimited. Yeah you could go back in but if I want to buy like $10k in Hotels.com I don’t really want to do one at a time