Deal has expired, view more Office Depot/Max deals by clicking here
The Offer
- Office Depot/Max stores are offering a $10 instant discount when you buy $300 in Mastercard gift cards.
The Fine Print
- Valid 3/31 – 4/6/19
Our Verdict
It doesn’t show in the weekly ad, but usually it’ll still work in all stores. Not sure why they don’t post these in the weekly ads sometimes. Buy a $200 + $200 card or one $200 and one $100 card, the $10 discount will offset most of the fees. (The $20-$500 variable cards are cash only.) You’ll probably have to buy $300 of cards in separate transactions to multiply this. Some stores will allow multiple transactions and others won’t.
Time to pull out those INK cards or any other card that earns at a high rate on office supply store purchases. Let us know if you find any other stacks (not sure if this Wells Fargo Go Far deal is still around).
Hat tip to reader @rent_is_high/
I called the USB’s MCG card number 888-853-9536 whole day today but couldn’t get it through. Not sure if they block my number purposely as I have a pending case with them to get a refund or they are just simply out of business. Could anyone please confirm? Thanks.
Does plastiq care how many of these you unload at once?
Why would you do plastiq? you have to pay 2.5% fee for that
Plastiq doesn’t. It can be good if you have FFD and/or if it comes up with the 1% rate, as reported on Reddit recently.
Don’t forget to check out Yelp. There is 7% cashback on ODOM since April 4th.
I’m trying to meet the minimum spend on my BofA business cash card, which earns 3% at office supply stores.
Does anyone know if these master card prepaid cards work as regular debit at costco?
Costco in store only accepts Visa. I have bought Costco Cash cards online with these prepaid mastercards. I use the exact amount per order, i.e. $100 Cash card paid for with $100 prepaid card.
Ugh, traveling through the Phoenix area and was planning to take advantage of the plethora of Office Max locations here, but the first one I went to only had $100’s left. Checked behind the rack and lo and behold there were a lot of 200 MC’s in there. Unfortunately they were US Bank versions but I figured I’d just take the risk and unload quickly.
Thinking I’d finally gotten one over a store playing games with us I put a handful on the rack and took my cards up front, fully prepared to have the cashier say she couldn’t sell them to me for some reason…
Everything seemed to be fine while she rang me up but then she said they failed to activate. The surly manager comes over, says they’ve been having problems with the MC’s all week and tries to refund me for just one card, but I pointed out the charge went through for both. After some grumbling he says oh, only one card failed, the other one is good.
Not surprisingly it didn’t load properly and now I have to fax receipts, etc. Soooo basically I got greedy and should have stayed away from these damn USB cards as we all know we need to do to retain our sanity… Please don’t make the same mistake if your stores haven’t switched to Meta Bank yet!
I just had the same experience this afternoon. At least my cashier said I’d have to call the card number and didn’t try to say it was good for the second 200 card I’m stuck with and now need try to work the refund.
Old old USB cards won’t activate if they have been balance checked before. Since it’s highly likely the funds will be stolen from you in short order if the activation goes through.
Faxed in details Thursday. They actually called me back Friday, but went to voicemail with generic message to call back. Called back, after getting through to a person, they said department checking with bank, unclear what that means, I assume my credit card. I’ll give it some time, at least their fax works…
I had the same issue with USB cards as well. One failed activation right away and OD refunded me. Another passed through but fund never reached the card. I called for about 1 hour and had to fax in details but never got call from them. I called the number on the card today 1-888-853-9536 but call got dropped right after connected. Not sure what’s going on with the department. Are there other ways to reach them? Thanks.
I think these are USBank not Meta’s. Last time I did a round of these, 4 out of 50 cards were hacked. I’ve bought thousands of Meta visa/mc, never had a hacked card.
Were the hacked cards from US Bank and Mygiftcardsite.com?
They are metabank. I just went.
Yes, that’s correct. I just went yesterday and they are all Metas now. So go buck wild! Yay…no more US bank! Variable are never cash only at any of my office depots, they’ve always accepted CC for variables for me.
In-store only?
Yes
Is this offer available without any coupon or checkout code? In other words, I can just go and purchase a combination of $300 (or more) MC GCs in a single transaction and the $10 discount is applied at check-out? Can I then go again and buy another $300 and get it again? I’ll appreciate a confirmation from anyone that actually tried it. Thanks much guys.
Correct no coupon/code needed.
Thanks Jeremy.
My local store only allows one transaction per day, but if there is a change in shift, you might get a different cashier later in the day.
Just a note on the discount – it won’t show up until after the POS prompts you to choose whether you want a printed or emailed receipt. Just ignore the initial incorrect total the cashier gives you and then it’ll be the right amount before you pay.
Any tips on how to liquidate these MCGCs
Depending on where you live, you may be able to buy a money order with them at a supermarket. If they’ll let you use them as a “debit card,” you can try to split payment to make the transaction more efficient (aka, get rid of multiple cards at the same time). That said, these $200s are certainly more trouble and less lucrative than dealing with $500s.
Can I buy a MO with these? If not besides plastique, hoe is everyone getting rid of these?