Deal has ended, view more Staples deals by clicking here.
The Offer
- Staples stores will be selling $200 Mastercard gift cards with the $6.95 activation fee waived from 7/18-7/24
The Fine Print
- Limit 5 per customer per day; check with your local store to see their rules
- Valid 7/18-7/24
- In-store only
Our Verdict
Currently same offer for Visa gift cards. Remember to use a card that earns a high rate on office supply store purchases.
Hat tip to GC Galore
So will Walmart still let us load bluebird cards with gift cards. I hear conflicting stories.
It seems the limit is now $99 even at the regular register for loading BB AMEX with MB VGC from Staples. We are screwed.
My staples was already out of the cards by the time I got in the afternoon today.
I’ve gone everytime on Sunday morning whenever they have these promotions and they’re always sold out of BOTH MC and Visa $200 GC (even if there is no discount on that particular card.
Sure enough my local staples had 0 in Stock but had all other denominations. How they advertise advertise sale and have 0 at store opening is interesting.
Been loading my GoBank card at Walmart for years fee free. Today I was charged a $3.74 fee. My GoBank card was purchased directly at a Walmart store.
Join the club. It appears to be a new nationwide thing now. Not sure if it’s a glitch or what but Wally World and GoBank are still both advertising free loads. I’ve put GoBank on hold for now.
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/manufactured-spending/1738030-gobank-greendot-online-banking-debit-card-2016-onwards-88.html
With the restrictions at my local walmarts ($99 loads) this made an easy decision to cancel my gobank. I did send a quick email to walmart who blamed gobank. Emails to gobank initially said I was not charge a fee (attached receipt with fee), fees are always and have always been charged (attached their fee pdf that shows walmart is fee free), then back to I was not charged a fee. It was a combination of “we were always at war with eastasia” and “who is on first.”
I canceled mine a few months ago after I forgot to “dd” and was about to be charged a monthly fee. I haven’t MSd in probably a yr, so easy decision. One thing to note is that their site has very conflicting info about how to close the acct. One page says that to close the acct, you bring the bal to $0 and they will close it eventually. Another page says that you’ll still incur monthly fees. Take screenshots I guess.
C’mon, waiting for Office Depot/Max to do their promo. Been about 3 months now…
At the rate of these promotions, it won’t take me too long to hit the 25K limit on the Ink Cash card and 50K limit on my Ink Plus card.
Wow you have the Ink Plus? I think that card is discontinued a long time ago, right?
It was discontinued in early 2017. I’ll probably never get rid of it because it feels exclusive and I spend over 25k per year in the 5X category to justify the fee.
What does the 5x max out at for the Ink Plus?
$50K per year https://creditcards.chase.com/ink-business-credit-cards/customers/ink-plus/card-details
$50k per year (250k URs)
I’ve had the Ink Plus for years. Saw no reason to get rid of it.
I got rid of it when I got my CSR. Seemed duplicative if I can transfer points and the added $25k of office store capacity isn’t useful to me.
I earn the majority of my points from these OD/Staples offers using my Ink.
Unloading cards $200 each is such a pain though, especially when kiosks are not an option.
How do you even liquidate these? Seeing a lot of DPs that they don’t work for WM MOs in r/churning.
I don’t really MS these. I either use these for everyday spend and just take the 5X UR points. If I start stockpiling a lot of cards, then I lend the money through Kiva. I’ve got a fairly regular flow with Kiva where I get about $5 – $6k per month in loan repayments, then I use my repayment money to go buy $5 – $6k worth of VGCs. I relend the value of the VGCs and keep the 5X URs. The biggest downside is that I have to be able to float over $25k worth of loans at once which has an opportunity cost. I’m very selective about where I loan my money so I only have a 0.19% default rate. I also use Kiva to help reach signup bonuses when I can’t get there alone on organic spend.
Thanks for your ideas!
No fees for using GCs for lending. You don’t earn any interest. The monetary gains are in credit card rewards. There’s also a gain in the feeling that your loans may be helping others.
Thanks in advance!
No fees for lending with Kiva. The costs of lending with Kiva are the lost opportunity of having your money tied up for months and loan defaults. Over the years I’ve loaned over $180k with losses of about $350.
Pre-pandemic? I’ve read defaults are higher than usual the last year+
In my case defaults aren’t any higher than any other year. I don’t really even have too many delinquent loans (under 5% delinquent).
The real question is what is your return? ROI? Including the defaults. Never heard of kiva.
It’s hard to calculate this value. You’re not getting any interest off of Kiva loans. The gains are all in credit card rewards. I had a problem of accumulating too many VGCs and this is my way of getting rid of them.
Be very careful with this, I’ve lost over 10% lending on kiva. Considered it charity. Also, kiva could shut your account down on MS detection. Just avoid.
Be very careful with this, I’ve lost over 10% lending on kiva. Considered it charity. Also, kiva could shut your account down on MS detection.
I stopped doing Kiva in late 2019, did around $40,000 in loans total, and my lifetime default rate is about 1.5% and currency loss rate of 0.1%. I still have roughly 1% of that $40,000 in a paying back delinquent” limbo. Some of it was my fault in lending to US borrowers (never do that, since cheaper credit is easier to get for most people who have paid their bills on time, and business backed loans go down if the business fails) but discounting that I would have a default rate six times that. So potentially a 2.6% loss offset by using 5% cards is a net of 2.4% which is OK but not worth the hassle IMHO, which is why I stopped.
I agree. Don’t lend to US borrowers on Kiva. Most of my loans end up in Paraguay, Ecuador, or Philippines.
So just get more then 1 ink cash card. Problem solved.
My local Staples sold out of MCGC during the last promo, but while in buying VGC this week, saw they were all restocked. So worth checking if your store sold out last time.
Trash. Stick with the VGC offers, soon-to-be-bankrupt Staples.