The Offer
- Office Max is offering a $20 discount on the purchase of $300 in Visa or Mastercard gift cards.
The Fine Print
- Valid until 11/28/15
- Limit 2 discounts per customer ($40 off $600 is the most you can get according to the terms). Update: The register is not actually enforcing this limit, via Milestomemories
- Discount comes off instantly at register
- Office Max only, offer is not showing at Office Depot reportedly
Our Verdict
This is obviously an awesome deal if can find the $200 denomination gift cards since you’ll end up paying $580 for $600 in Visa gift cards after the $40 discount kicks in ($620 – $40 + $580). Even if you have to buy $100 cards which will make for more fees (6 activation fees instead of 3 activation fees), it could make sense if you have a Chase INK card as you’ll rack up lots of free office-supply bonus points and you’ll end up paying slightly less than $600 for $600 in gift cards.
It’s possible that it will work to buy more than $600 in one transaction, but 2 x $300 is the official limit so it may not work. Let us know your experiences.
You can buy more than $600 so long as it’s split up into separate transactions or separate store visits. The limit on how much you can do will depend on what the store allows, e.g. they may recognize you from being there an hour ago and enforce the limit of $600 in gift cards per person.
The biggest problem with deals like this is that the stores run out of the gift cards quickly. In the past, we’ve seen deals like this last a few weeks which gives time for restocking, but this deal is only this weeks and stock will definitely be a limitation here.
HT: milestomemories and the picture above is from there as well
I just need a gift card. I don;t have all the other to write down.Just ned a $600.oo gift card.please.
I went back to my local Office Max, got 3 x $500 variable visa gift card . Cashier activated them and said it was $1411( and few cents) cash only. I paid in cash and made $89.00. Unloaded all three the ussual way on my way back home. Thank you for the info Chuck.
I thought they were cash only, the variable load ones. Not that my OfficeMax carries visa variable load ones. Only Mastercard ones
Can’t read. U did mention cash. Just finished third round today. Nice haul at the end. Over 26k UR points and over $165 cash.
I just finished a rather prolific week. I did a couple $1500×2 with cash and another $200 x 26 over the week. Too bad the promo was so short!
It’s mudder funkers like you that strip the supplies so nothing is left for guys like me!
Atta boy!
So here’s my story. Walked into OfficeMax and noticed they had variable MasterCard gift cards. So I took one to the register and said I wanted to purchase one for the full $500 amount. I asked about the $20 discount (they didn’t have any signs or anything) and the cashier hadn’t heard about it. She had to call a supervisor over since the total was so high, and the supervisor hadn’t heard about it either. But the discount came off at the register and was only charging me $480. BUT – they said I could only pay with cash. I asked if they were sure and she showed me the register saying cash only and that it wouldn’t allow a credit card to be used. So I wonder if each store has set their own restrictions on how you can pay for these gift cards. I thought I was going to hit the jackpot when I saw the $500 cards but ended up walking out empty handed. 🙁
Update: I now see that Frequent Miler posted a blog entry on this. Office Max variable load cards are indeed cash-only now.
http://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/2015/11/05/officemax-variable-gift-cards-cash-only/
i played dumb, and had the manager personally pull out 200visas and walk me through it, great experience haha
he was telling me someone drove 50 miles to grab 3k haha, great customer service when manager tells you, use a chase card for 5x points …beautiful!!
I just did 9 x $200 in 1 transaction. Total 1742.55.
Bought 6 yesterday with CC no problem. Today, registers were hardcoded to not allow CC. Nice while it lasted.
Some jerk ripped the barcode tabs off all the $200 gift cards (~9-10 of them.) Told the cashier but they said that “it’s fine, they’ll still work.” Well, it’s not your $600+ at risk so I had to settle for the untampered $100 ones.
Worked without any problems. The cashier did take a long look at my ID and called some phone number during the transaction.
I did six $200 in one transaction and received the promo multiple times. No problem using a credit card at Office Max.
Same experience
Thanks so much for posting this. I kept hoping one of these promos would show up! 🙂
$200 VGC were almost out. Only 5 left. so had to get 4 MC GC. will hopefully do a second round later. this is nice score.
I’ve tried these Office Max and Office Depot VGC deals in 4 different states over last 5 months or so. It’s always a total crap shoot and I had about a 20% success rate on 25 or so attempts before giving up. Various issues make it a waste of time… out of stock, not running promo, misinformation, and cash only seem to be common themes. They really don’t have their act together. Unless you just happen to be driving/walking by one or have had success at a convenient location before, I wouldn’t go out of your way.
Since the local OM is within 5 miles of res, makes a bit of cents (sense) for me. 🙂