The Offer
Direct Link (page 6)
- Purchase American Express gift cards at Office Depot and Office Max with no purchase fee.
The regular purchase fee of $3.95 – $6.95 is waived.
The Fine Print
- Valid 11/15 – 11/21
- Not valid in VT
Our Verdict
This could be a good deal to rack up points with the Chase INK card. You’ll have to spend down the Amex gift cards, but at least you’ll be racking up 5x anywhere with no purchase fee. One good method of spending these down is to use them on Paypal (for any merchant which accepts Paypal), although you’ll have to deal with the $1 hold that they put on the card initially.
The variable-load cards won’t be able to be purchased with a credit card, but you should be able to purchase the $200 cards with a credit card and they’ll ring up automatically at the register with no fee.
[In the Office Depot/Max ad (page 7) there is also mention of the temporary Serve cards being fee-free, but I don’t know if the system will allow those can be purchased with a credit card. If they can, that would be a better deal since you can load them with $500 and the $1 monthly fee only hits after 30-days.]
HT: Slickdeals
Walgreens advertised no fee AMEX gift cards in yesterday’s paper. I think the deal was thru Wednesday.
Didn’t see that. Thanks for posting! 🙂
I bought several Amex no fee $200 gc at Office Depot today. Ran into problem at Family Dollar – couldn’t load on Serve. Not possible to do according to the manager. Is there another retailer that will do the reload? Kiosks at Walmart? Thanks for your advice.
doesnt work at my local office max.
The system hasnt been updated to take off the fee.
So, i was left with a choice to take it (with a fee) or come back tomorrow.
I asked him, if you were me, are you going to take it….
A certain store by me will let me buy VGC without looking at my credit card–they just scan my driver’s license. I’m curious if they’d let me split tender and buy $500 visa gift cards with multiple $200 Amex gift cards. If that’s the case I would need to hit the $200 AGC hard with Ink.
Can these be bought online ?
In store only. I just tried it online.
I normally load Visa cards on Serve – any issues loading these Amex cards on Serve, or getting MO with them?
It won’t work. Only Visa (or maybe Mastercard) works for that.
would these work with plastiq?
Yes, but you would need to call and add your address for each card.
Address can’t be added online?
Also, I just did a bunch of payments with Visa GC using Plastiq, and never once did I register an address. For the address when making the Plastiq payment, I just put my home. Plastiq just emailed me that they sent off one of the payments, but I haven’t had confirmation that it’s arrived yet. Still, address must not be necessary if they mailed out a check.
Any creative way to liquidate these without “real” spend? Are they regularly accepted at retailers who allow CC to purchase GC?
One could buy as much of these as they can and then turn them around for vgc
You would still have to pay the activation fee at the retailer but would at least score the 5x points
On the other hand it could be a PITA doing split transactions at your retailer of choice running two or three of the cards if the max is $200