As we all know, buying $200 Visa Gift Cards from Staples.com with your Chase Ink Credit Card can be quite a lucrative endeavor. Earning 5x points per dollar and loading the gift cards onto your Amex Bluebird or Serve Card at your local WalMart to pay off your credit card bill is one of the best ways to manufacture spend these days. The only problem is that each card carries a $6.95 fee, which only slightly cuts into your points earnings.
However, Staples currently has a promo code for $5 off $50: 51520. That drops the cost of the gift card down from $206.95 to $201.95. Make sure your Chase Ink card is linked to the Visa Savings Edge program to earn an additional 1% cash back on your statement credit for purchases made at Staples. Staples is being discontinued from this program after 12/31, so take advantage now will you still can! The statement credit brings the $200 gift card down to $199.93.
The discount applies to the total transaction so this only works for one card at a time. If you feel the need to (who doesn’t want to earn a ton of Ultimate Rewards points) , you can create multiple emails to take advantage of this promo code by using the guest checkout. You may also need to use multiple browsers, use an incognito browser, or clear your cache between the multiple transactions and orders. YMMV!
Great find, picked up 1 for me, 1 for spouse. Too lazy to mess with guest checkout stuff but a couple of easy MS hits always welcome.
Merry Christmas!
Always happy to help! Merry Christmas!
Thanks as well! Merry Christmas!
Thanks a lot, Julien. This worked like a charm. Happy Holidays!
You still have to drive to Staples to pick them up and then liquidate them later. Is it really worth it for 1 or 2 cards? Silly really. 2000 points for 2 cards or $20 revenue before time and gas $. If you value your time, it wouldn’t make sense unless you have Staples and WM across the street. Now if you can scale this up to 5 cards, that would make more sense. Then again if you are unemployed or retired or have way too much time on your hands, every $ can help so what the hell do I know 🙂 Happy holidays!
Who said you have to go to Staples to pick up the cards? They get mailed to you. My friend bought $7,000 worth of gift cards amounting to 35,000 free Ultimate Rewards points that are enough to book a free roundtrip transcontinental flight and have an extra 10k points on top!
This is the link saying you pick it up in store,
http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/products/141221/42427/index.html?icid=INST:HP:LPB:BOPISOFFER:20141223:1
Maybe you don’t have to?
As far as the 35,000 UR points, don’t forget $6.95 x ($7,000/$200) in fees is not free. With the Visa Sav Edge (good for 7 more days) it’s a better deal, however. I’ve done a lot of it myself (3 Ink cards) but without the VSE, it probably won’t be worth the costs, at least for me. If I didn’t need to recoup the $ in fees and was frequently traveling anyway, it’s a no brainer. Good move for some though.
Hmm that’s news to me because Visa Gift Cards ordered online are usually handled by a third party service, but I guess we’ll know soon enough. With regards to the $7,000, my friend was able to buy each gift card in a separate transaction and apply the $5 off to each order. Effectively purchasing each gift card for just under $200. But I agree that after the VSE for Staples expires, it won’t be nearly as lucrative or worth the time and effort. Thanks for your insight!