Via Dans Deals, Vanilla gift cards are showing up as fee-free at Office Depot and Office Max stores. Note that it’s a different type of gift card depending on whether you’re talking about OD or OM. At Office Max, it’s the “regular” Visa Gift cards (issued by Metabank and subject of many Mad Lib free money deals such as this), but at Office Depot, it’s VANILLA Visa gift cards.
The reports are that the Vanilla Visa gift cards at Office Depot are showing up as fee-free nationwide but some Office Max stores have them fee-free and some do not. Office Depot policy allows credit card purchases on fixed amount Visas, but not on the variable load ones.
I can report that the one Office Depot store I stopped at did have Vanilla Visas, they let me pay with a credit card, and it was fee free. They were out of $200 cards so I bought 1 $100 card (I’ll feel bad if the deal is dead by the time I go back tomorrow 😀 ). The Office Max store did not have any Vanilla Visas that I saw and the regular Metabank Visa gift card I bought DID charge the fee.
Note that the Vanilla Visa gift cards are a bit trickier to reload – in that Walmart’s systems seem to limit them to purchases of $49.99 or less. There were reports in the Flyertalk thread accompanying the deal of someone liquidating thousands of dollars of cards, $49.99 at a time…. Talk about time-consuming 😀
If you’re wondering why this is a big deal, we’re basically talking about unlimited (well, limited only by how many cards they have and your time) free 5x points when paying with your Chase Ink card.
A note on deal killing
Generally speaking, I think twice before posting a deal such as this on the blog, because there is a definite correlation between the more people that know about a deal, and the sooner the deal dies.
In this case I decided to post, because a) it’s already on Dans Deals (a site much bigger than mine – I am in fact, the lesser of 2 Dan’s 😀 ), and b) this deal seems unlikely to last very long anyways – I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s dead by tomorrow (but if it isn’t, I’ll be back at my Office Depot stores!)
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The deal has been around since Wednesday. Dans deals should ensure that it dies soon judging by people’s comments on the thread
Yes I think most people knew that this deal would not last very long…
I first saw it on Slickdeals on Saturday, and it’ll definitely be dead thanks to SD + Dan’s Deals haha. When I went to my Office Depot the manager told me that the GCs have been ringing up fee-free the ENTIRE prior week, and he had no idea why (he was asking me if I knew why!). That means this bug has been going on since at least March 30. Crazy!
I bought both, but Amex was easier to liquidate than VGC, because no pin is required. The next day I liquidated 40 $50-100 cards via 2 Redbirds. Only took 5 minutes, which is faster than my usual loading time with regular CCs because usually I have to get on the phone calling multiple CC companies due to their highly sensitive fraud alert system.
Hello,
I heard of this offer two days ago and went to my closest Office Depot and Office Max. But no luck, the cashier even said she had never even heard of this before.
Is this offer only for certain states? Does this offer exist in Southern California ?
Thank you.
I don’t think it was an actual “offer” but more likely a “glitch”. In any case it seems to be dead. You’ll have to catch the next one!