The Offer
Direct Link (ad page 2)
- Purchase $300 worth of Visa or Mastercard gift cards from Staples and receive a $20 Staples gift card via Staples Easy Rebate.
$200 Visa/Mastercard gift cards come with a $6.95 fee, while $100 gift cards come with $5.95 fee.
The Fine Print
- Deal valid from Sunday 4/19/15 until Saturday 4/25/15
- In-Store only
- Must complete a Staples Easy Rebate to get $20 Staples gift card
- Limit of one rebate per household
[Read: How to get more than one staples easy rebate]
Merchant Gift Card Offer
There’s one other gift card offer mentioned in the ad.
Direct Link (ad page 15)
- 15% discount on select gift cards. Limit one per customer.
It appears that the following gift cards are the ones which are on sale:
- Old Navy
- Gap
- Aero
- Spafinder
These are the cards pictured in the ad. According to the fine print, this deal is valid on SKUs 192555, 372983, 372984, 372985, 790658, 904563. And the deal is valid online as well.
None of these SKUs seem to pull up on  the website and I was advised by Staples via chat that they’re only available in-store. Apparently, the offer is technically valid online, but the cards aren’t actually sold online so you’ll have to get it in-store.
This makes a big difference since third-party gift cards purchased online have been earning portal points/cashback (though I’ve seen some more recent data points indicating that this may no longer be the case).
UPDATE 4/19/15: Just after this post went live, I found that there is actually available on the Staples website Gap e-gift cards at 15% off.
Not only that, but the limits are higher and you should be able to buy many hundreds of dollars worth of gift cards. If these were physical Gap gift cards it would be a better deal and could be a potential arbitrage opportunity with INK and the portal, but e-gift cards are harder to resell so keep that in mind.
Our Verdict
The Visa/Mastercard offer comes and goes. It could be a good deals especially for someone with a credit card that earns 5x at office supply stores.
The other gift card deal would be a little more interesting if it was able to be done online. [UPDATE: As noted, we now learned that it can be done online.] With portals and INK it could be a possible arbitrage opportunity, but for in-store it would be useful mostly just for someone who’s actually planning a purchase at those merchants.
HT: mistercheap on Fatwallet here and here
