Deal has expired, but you can now get $15 off $300+ in Visa gift cards
The Offer
- Office Depot/Max is offering a $10 instant discount when you buy $300 in Mastercard gift cards
The Fine Print
- Valid 12/9 – 12/15
- Instant discount at register
- Limit one per household business
- Gift card is issued by US Bank
Our Verdict
Two $200s or $200 + $100 works here, the instant discount almost wipes out the fees and you net the office supply category points. Stack with Chase Offers for another $10 back at Office Depot/Max.
Hat tip to reader Larry
Posted this elsewhere but probably relevant here as well….Remember it is very much BUYER BEWARE with any Prepd MC issued by US Bank. First off you have liquidation issues at WM. Secondly (and this has happened a bunch recently) for no rhyme or reason some (not all) cards go into an “unactivated state” and you must call in to the # on the back of the card to essentially tell them “yeah that card I just bought for $200…why don’t you go ahead and activate it”. My advice should you choose to risk it and buy these from Publix/Kroger or OD/OM/Staples, after purchase immediately call in to check the balance. If (rather than telling you the balance) the automated system sends you to a live rep…go ahead and tell the rep that you do, in fact, want the card to be activated (seems silly). They will then put you on hold as they talk to “internal” and they’ll come back on the line and tell you that the dog & pony show is over and you can now use the card. After going through this the past few days, I’m thinking that I’ll just wait for Visa deals at OD/OM (like the current one) or Staples no fee deals which are very convenient & require fewer trips (for lucky ones) .
MC is better than Visa in some instances because it can be used to pay off a mortgage on Plastiq. I have tons of fee free dollars from recent promos and so will be using the MCs from this and other promos to spend down that amount. I wouldn’t go crazy since it’s a $10 rather than $15 but will be stopping by the OD near work when I have the chance.
Wrong thread, and I can’t remove my post. Ignore.
+1 I thought I was the only weirdo who prefers MGC because I liquidate via Plastiq.
Stack with chase offers to save another $10.
I’ll add that, thanks
Are chase offers appearing on others business cards? I have only seen them on personal cards so far.
Same
Some fraud drained my gift cards purchased at Office Depot, can I charge back ? Should I try to contact Office Depot first? (I have already contacted the issuer and fax the documents, but getting a hold of issuer is really hard).
Sorry. Would you expect OD to give a refund if you bought a laptop and someone stole it? Card issure is your path.
No, you can’t. Key with MCGC is to have an almost immediate liquidation plan. One card I bought a couple years back at Staples was partially drained only 5 hours after purchase.
Come on, what do you think OD/OM will do if they start receiving chargebacks for GCs?
Do you want to get cash-only at your store, or even nationwide? Because that’s how you get cash-only. #meme
Call the numbers on the cards and file a claim. You’re not even supposed to do a chargeback before trying to resolve the issue with the merchant in the first place, so, please be kind enough to follow the instructions and not needlessly ruin the gold mine for yourself or your fellow churners.
Same thing happened to me, i’m still waiting on replacement from Mastercard. MCs are such a pain… I think i’ll stick to vgc’s from now on.
I tried calling MasterCard, they put me on hold for 40 minutes and then they cannot understand that some fraudster registered my card and drained it. I am just looking for ways to recover my loss but I don’t want to ruin the game for anyone.
I registered my card as soon as I bought it and it still got drained. They have ways around it. I had over 120 gcs and it takes me a bit of time to clear them all. All the metas were fine but the 4 MCs were all drained even when I registered my address already. I heard MCs had issues in the past but it seemed like it didnt happen anymore so i got lax. This happened last month.
FWIW I’ve never had a problem with my MGCs and I went bananas (see what I did there 😉 ) during the Plastiq-MasterPass promo, but I always unload asap. Registering the card is typically required if you plan to make an online purchase, but wouldn’t stop anyone making an in-store purchase if they duped the mag-stripe info to another card.
Ten bucks back obviously isn’t too exciting given the high fees and the hassle of dealing with $200 GCs. But it seems like Staples often does their own sometimes unadvertised Visa/MC promo whenever OD does one. I guess we can only wait and see.
Good for generic spending if you pay with a 5% cash back cc!
Not with MCGC because it is highly susceptible to FRAUD – you can buy VGC or AGC for such purpose but never MCGC which is meant to be liquidated within hours if possible.
If you are going to hold onto it for a few days you should immediate register it so in the event it is drained by thieves it is a slightly easier path to get your money back – but you really dont want to take the risk.
How easy is it to split tender at OD? I have a Chase reward that I can use for the first $100 and would prefer to use my Ink for the rest.
I tried once, was rejected (same idea as you — chase offer + chase offer + ink). Haven’t tried since.
Tried 6 cashiers at 3 ODs, none ever heard of split tender working.
I did split tender earlier this year for the credits from Visa on a Biz card, but never gotten the credits. Split payment itself worked. Tried contactless + Ink, even. It was at MyBizBox, RIP, branding is back to OD/OM now.
In my area split tender is hardcoded not going thru since 2 years ago. I have an extremely friendly store where I can buy as many as they have inventory and not trigger fraud alert on my cards. The manager flipped the register over to let me see the message.
It is such a pity the expected X’mas promo is on MCGC instead of VGC. Will pass. Not worth the hassle due to $200 is getting harder and harder to recycle, the fee is $2 higher (over the Everywhere), and MCGC is not safe to hold long.
Maybe apples to oranges, but I did split tender with three cards at Staples with no problem (using similar Chase offer and received credit on each card).
How can you liquidate master gift cards? Can you buy MO with them at Walmart?
The master card git cards in offer depot is Vanilla gift cards brand. Walmart MO doesnt accept vanilla brand gift cards. Winco, cubs, frys or others accepts this vanilla for MO
hate OD. love staples more.
Matercard? Is that tow-mater?
Fixed