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Negative Cost Office Depot Mastercard Gift Card Deal Returns + 5X

Shawn Coomer
Shawn Coomer

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Office Depot Mastercard Gift Card Deal

Office Depot has once again blessed us with a gift card deal for Mastercard gift cards if that is your sort of thing! Let’s take a look at the details.

Update 02/13/23: This offer is available again this week, through March 18, 2023.

a close up of a credit card

The Offer

  • Save $15 instantly when you buy $300 or more in Mastercard Gift Cards

Key Terms

Here are the deal terms as seen on the in-store sign explaining the promotion:

  • Limit one (1) offer per customer
  • Discount applied at register
  • Offer valid 03/12 – 03/18/23
  • While supplies last

While the limit of 1 discount per customer is probably hard-coded into the register, some stores will allow you to do multiple transactions. This varies from store to store and even sometimes from cashier to cashier!

The Math

You can purchase a $200 Mastercard Visa gift card with a $7.95 fee (up from $6.95).

Here is how the math works out on the purchase of 2 X $200 Mastercard gift card from Office Depot with this unadvertised promotion:

  • Cost of card: $415.90
  • Minus instant rebate: -$15
  • Final cost: $400.90
  • Cost: $0.90

How to Earn 5X/Maximize

It is best to pay with a card that earns 5X at office supply stores such as a Chase Ink Cash. For example, a Chase Ink Cash card would earn 2060 Ultimate Rewards points on the purchase. Deals like these can also be useful if you are working towards minimum spend on new card offers too.

Liquidating

Mastercard gift card deals are not as good as Visa deals since they’re a hassle to liquidate. For more detailed information on liquidating these cards, see: How To Liquidate Prepaid Visa & Mastercard Gift Cards

Conclusion

These deals are a great way rack up lots of points and keep a little bit of money in your pocket. Happy 5Xing and don’t forget to bring your Chase Ink cards with you!

Disclosure: Miles to Memories has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Miles to Memories and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers.

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Shawn Coomer
Shawn Coomerhttps://milestomemories.com/
Shawn Coomer earns and burns millions of miles/points per year circling the globe with his family. An expert at accumulating travel rewards, he founded Miles to Memories to help others achieve their travel goals for pennies on the dollar. Shawn also runs a million dollar reselling business, knows Vegas better than most and loves to spend his time at the 12 Disney parks across the world.

Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

40 COMMENTS

  1. It looks like this is no longer a “negative cost” deal, since it does cost $0.90. Unless you have an unused OD cashback offer from Chase, it is probably better to wait for the common “no fee VGC” promo from Staples.

  2. Add another 2% cashback to profitability by ensuring the credit card being used is active with Dosh. Occasionally Dosh offers double cashback which week before last meant 4% cashback plus 5 UR/$!

  12. Quick heads up Sean. I just bought a Kevlar visa $200 at OD valid through 04/28 and the fee has been increased to $6.95 per card.

  13. I bought $5400 in inventory on Paypal last week for my business with 27 $200 VGCs. Another time spent $3000 at Costco with 15 of them.

    A bit cumbersome with Paypal, but pretty fast once you know the procedure.

  14. Dumb question here but I’ll ask anyway: do you actually know people who still have Bluebird? Both of my accounts were shut down years ago in the Great Bluebird Purges.

    • I have one! Some people were able to get them again after being shut down in the past. Doesn’t hurt to check by trying to get a new one. My wife wasn’t allowed a new one but I was.

    • I have one but have never done much MS on mine. I’ve had it for at least 5 years. I obtained it to tip my toes into MS but never could figure out all the details originally but not sure if it’s valuable to have now? I even have a few walmarts in my rural area that still have kiosks.

    • Maybe they do it to keep people like us away! 🙂 Doesn’t work though! In all seriousness I don’t know either, but there is a ton about these deals we don’t know about. Clearly they are subsidized by the banks, so perhaps its all contractual.

  16. for some, since costco switched to Visa it’s been a breeze.
    “These cards should work fine to load Bluebird/Serve at Walmart and work many other places”. — its been yrs since i loaded BB, how many walmarts are there? do you load as debit to BB?

  17. Shawn is THE expert here and will most likely give you better examples than me BUT, I used my cards to pay utility bills that are not covered under another bonus program. ex. Paid my car insurance with a $200 VGC. That left a little credit on my next month’s bill. Could do two or three months worth if I had enough cards.
    Was hoping to buy bed at IKEA for daughter soon using these cards, but from what I hear, IKEA will not except VGC. : (

    Gary

    • Hey Shawn, those VGC’s are $6.95. Still, a profit of $3.05 isn’t bad. Also, 5x Chase UR points on one of these purchases should yield 485 points.

      • The $200 cards are $6.95 and indeed are a better deal, but I believe the $100 cards are $5.95. It’s confusing to create the math for every scenario so we just leave the base $100 cards in the post. I would personally buy a $200 card. Hopefully a specialty card like Style Everywhere that works at Supercenters and only costs $4.95.

  21. Shawn, how do you usually cash out your cards?
    That’s my biggest issue with buying these, the pain of cashing them out.
    I’ve been use the Chase and AMEX offers lately to get 10% back at Staples and Lowes for Uber/Target GCs since I will use them and can load them on my app and throw away the card.

    • well according to Shawn above Blue Bird works. I used to do load VGC monthly at Walmart money kiosk but since around 16 that option was gone. I may try again at Walmart.

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At Miles to Memories we share the best tips, tricks and deals plus travel rants, musings, hotel, airline and loyalty program reviews and a lot more! Our goal is to help people save money so they can get out there and travel the world! Through our various blog posts, podcasts & videos we teach others how to maximize loyalty rewards, hotel & airline programs and credit cards to achieve amazing things.

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Editorial Note - Opinions expressed here are the author's alone, not those of any partner bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other partner. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.