For those of you who like to buy cash-psuedo cash products with a discount, and love to use your Chase Ink Bold to get 5x points on them, on the surface it looks like a pretty good week.
How about some discounted Amex gift cards from OfficeMax?
Now previous gift card deals at OfficeMax have been a huge money and points bonanza. This isn’t that deal. First, it’s Amex cards so you can’t unload them like debit Visas or Mastercards. Second, it’s supposed to be limited to one per transaction. Now on previous occasions this wasn’t actually coded in the system, but my guess is they’ve learned from their mistakes. But last, those cheap bastards at OfficeMax have excluded the $200 cards, meaning you’ve got to get 2 cards and pay two $5.95 fees, leaving you with a grand total of… $3 in profit (you’re buying $200 in gift cards for $197). Yes you will get 5x miles, but you’re also dealing with a bunch of $100 cards that you’ll need to burn.
But wait… Staples also has an AMEX Gift Card Deal next week!
Found in their upcoming weekly ad. Is it any better? Let’s look…
Well, it doesn’t exclude the $200 card, which is good. However, you still need to get 2 cards since they only carry denominations up to $200 cards. So with 2 $6.95 fees, it’s about $14 in total fees so it’s a whopping $6 moneymaker on 2 $200 cards plus a little over 2000 points.
However, the rebate is a Staples gift card and is limited to one per household.
So in the battle of the weak gift card deals this week, I declare OfficeMax the winner by the lamest of margins..
Also in Staples ad – a Toshiba Laptop with Intel Core i7 Processor for $349?
Say what? This is the same processor family as in Staples most expensive laptops which cost from $3k to $8k and you can get one for $349 next week?
What’s the catch… Read the fine print. Staples is advertising for a display model, 1 per store, and not available in all stores. Did my closest store have one today before the sale begins? Nope. Do I think you will be able to find one? I sincerely doubt it, but if you see it.. its a darn good deal, the cheapest comparable one I saw on Amazon was $729.
Seems like bait and switch to me to list such a low stock item in a national circular… but I’m no legal expert despite going 2 and 0 against the Netgear Compliance Team.
KmartSears returns 94.34% of my money
Following the saga of my botched pickup order detailed here…
In a stunning display of a corporation not knowing what the rest of the corporation is doing, I received 5 Kmart gift cards totaling $470 in the mail yesterday. This coupled with the $530 that was refunded to my credit card means that they have returned approximately $1000 of my $1060 order. Could the difference be the $60 tax included in the $1060? Possibly. Could it be random? Who knows.
Keep in mind that I had conversations yesterday and the day prior with customer service promising to look into the matter, but neither rep seemed to realize that a refund was actually en route, just saying they had to investigate with the store. Never mind that the store had called me and didn’t seem to realize that a refund was in order.
Now since I originally paid with gift cards I received at 10% off and $530 was refunded back via credit card, I effectively made $53 on that so I’m really only about $7 out of pocket. And if the $80 Upromise credit posts I might actually come out ahead even if they don’t refund the tax.
But I wouldn’t wish the experience on even the worst card pimping blogger..