Why gift cards?
The Chase Ink Business Cash (CIBC) gets 5x at office supply stores up to $25,000 per year. You can get more information on this card by reading this course. This category also includes internet, cable and phone services. Thus, your phone bill, cable, internet and streaming bills should all be on the CIBC. However, this means that you have to subtract those amounts from the $25,000 if you intend on maxing out that bonus category. If you have multiple CIBCs or you don’t spend that much, then you don’t have to worry about this.
The goal here is to use gift cards (GCs) to get 5x on as many purchases as possible that would otherwise only get 1.5x, 2x or 3x. If you can max out this bonus, you’ll get 125,000 points a year which equals $2,500 (at least) worth of points. Sure this requires some extra work but we think an extra $2500 in free travel is worth it. If you really get into this, it’s not even work. The game is fun.
The primary office supply stores are Staples and Office Depot/Office Max. Note that this is bonus category is not limited to Visa and Mastercard GCs or even GCs but most people don’t spend a ton of money at office supply stores. Buying these GCs allows you to spend them almost anywhere instead of being limited to a specific store. However, we do buy Amazon GCs and load our account with those so that we an use the V/MC GCs elsewhere.
What about the fees?
This is very important. The fees for these Visa and MC GCs are either $6.95 or $7.95 each. If you actually pay these fees, you’ll get a much lower return. While you’ll probably still come out ahead, it kind of defeats the purpose. There’s just no need for it so I do not suggest that you even think about paying these fees. Thankfully you can avoid them by taking advantage of the sales that seem to be just about every week.
PURCHASING
The sales and how to find them
I’m not sure who is in charge of coordinating this but the sale seems to rotate every week. The sales rotate between Staples and OD/OM, whether they are Visa or MC and whether they are $15 off $300 worth of GCs or fee free up to a certain number of $200 GCs. Our personal favorite is the $15 off $300. There are no $300 GCs so you will get $15 off two $200 GCs. You’re still paying a small fee if you do it like that but it gets even better. If you buy three, it winds up being $10 off per card. You’ll wind up paying less than face value by a few dollars. That being said, I’ll still jump on the fee free cards as well.
The easiest way to check these sales is to use the Doctor of Credit website. These two links get updated constantly so just check them and both and they’ll tell you what the current sale is:
Office Depot/Office Max sale (Mastercard)
Office Depot/Office Max sale (Visa)
Staples sale (Mastercard)
Staples sale (Visa)
While there’s a sale just about every week, you never know when they are going to stop this or put it on hold for a while so don’t assume that there’s always going to be another sale next week until you actually see that a sale has been announced.
Furthermore, some of you are unfortunate enough to live in a place where there is only one store. Thus, you’ll want to make sure to stock up when you can since the sales don’t always bounce back and forth to each store. Sometimes its one store with a different sale two weeks in a row.
Store level issues
Like anything else with travel hacking, this isn’t always smooth sailing. The employees at these stores don’t exactly like this whole thing for any number of reasons so you’re probably not gonna make any friends. It’s a big time suck on their part and there can be a lot of theft issues even though there’s no value to these once they’re activated (more on that later). Some stores will create their own policies such as lower limits than what is advertised, having to show ID when it’s not required or locking them up in the back and possibly not even telling you. It can be frustrating because you don’t always know what to expect from one store to the next. Further upsetting everyone is that they’ll probably have to call a manager over to approve the transaction.
These GCs aren’t a huge priority for these stores and it’s my understanding that it’s a separate vendor that handles these. I’ve seen stores that didn’t get any of these GCs for weeks. If there’s a lot of travel hackers in your area, the stores may run out pretty quickly. If you notice this happening at stores near you, I suggest you call in advance to make sure that they have them in stock. I’ve had to do that a few times. Regardless, if you get to the store and don’t see what you’re looking for, be sure to ask. Sometimes they have more hidden away somewhere while they may also just always keep them in the back to avoid theft issues. Sometimes there’s a sign saying you need to ask for them while other times you wouldn’t know unless you asked. As you do this more often, you’ll get a feel for your local store’s policies and procedures.
Selecting the right cards
There are a variety of GCs to choose from. You need either the $200 GCs or cards that have a variable rate up to $200. Anything else usually isn’t going to work. For example, you can’t buy two $100 GCs to take advantage of the no fee sale. It has to be $200. But other than that, it doesn’t matter whether they are the cards with the flower background, the black packaging, the blue packaging, etc. None of that matters at all.
Purchasing
Once you’ve found that sale and selected the cards, there are a few things you need to be aware of once you’re at the register. Be sure to have your ID ready. Some stores or employees may ask for your ID to make sure you have it on you and that it matches your credit card. You should also know that as these are being rung up, you probably won’t see the sale. You have to wait until everything is rung up. You’ll be asked how you want your receipt. Make sure you get one. Once you select that, you’ll see the actual total. Confirm that the total is correct before you pay.
I also suggest that you don’t buy more than you need. These cards are not 100% secure.
Theft issues
We’ve personally never had any issues with these cards but every now and then, there’s been reports that the cards were compromised. When you select the cards, you’ll want to make sure that they haven’t been tampered with especially in cities. I was told that Atlanta had a massive problem with these GCs. People would steal them, get the numbers and then put them back on the shelves. People would buy them which activates them. The value is then drained before they can be used. In fact, there’s a class action lawsuit against Visa going on right now over this very issue. Even if you think that the GC looks secure, you’re goal should be to use these GCs sooner rather than later.
Staying organized
One of the reasons why GCs are so profitable is because a lot of people lose them or don’t use all of the value. They’ll eventually expire and that unused balance is pure profit to the issuer. I suggest keeping these cards somewhere where they won’t get lost. I like to put them in a manila envelope if I’m not going to use them right away. I also hold on to the receipt. You’ll need that proof of purchase if something goes wrong.
Checking balances and Registering
As you use the GCs on multiple purchases, it can be hard to keep track of the total amount used. Thankfully, each GC has a website on the back of it that will allow you to check the balances. This will help make sure that you fully liquidate the card. You don’t want to throw them out with money still left on them.
On the same website, you can also register the card so that it is linked to your name and address. Some people do this to avoid theft issues but I question how helpful that really is especially since you don’t usually need to input any information at a store. The only time I register cards is the rare occasion where I try to use a card on line and it gets denied. This is almost always because the system is trying to match my information and since there’s no name or address, it can’t. Once I register the GC, the transaction will go through when I try again. This is pretty rare though.
USAGE
Where can you use these GCs?
These cards “should” be accepted anywhere Visa or Mastercard are accepted. Every now and then you’ll run into a small business that will claim that they can’t accept them. How you handle that is up to you but I tell them that their merchant agreement doesn’t allow them to choose this. They have to accept them. I only ran into that a few times and I was able to resolve it by educating them in a polite way.
Please note that there is no chip so you can’t insert or tap these cards. They have to be swiped and that’s where there can be issues sometimes if the POS doesn’t allow swiping. Sometimes they can input the information manually while other times there’s just nothing that can be done. Again, doesn’t happen often but it does happen. Since it’s not a choice, all you can do is use a real credit card and move on.
What about large transactions?
Unfortunately, not every purchase is $200 or less. In those situations, the issue is going to come down to whether you can use multiple cards. Travel agents aren’t usually happy when someone wants to pay for a cruise with a giant stack of GCs but they have to deal with it. However, sometimes there just isn’t an option so in those situations you’re kind of out of luck unless you can figure out some type of work around that is unique to that company.
Gas stations
Getting 5x for your gas is really nice but using a GC could present a problem. Since the machine doesn’t know how much gas you’re gonna buy, it checks your card up to a certain amount to make sure you’re good for it. Since your GC may not have enough, it’ll get kicked back. I can usually get the machine to accept the card if it’s got the full $200 on it. If your GC gets kicked back, the workaround is to go see the cashier and purchase a set amount of gas. You’ll have to estimate here.
So what happens if you go over? According to a few gas station employees I spoke with, whatever you don’t use will get sent back to the card. Do you really trust that though? I don’t. So I’ll estimate about 80% of what I need to be safe and then use the CIBC to get 2x for the balance. Still a pretty good deal.
Another option is to use the Walmart app (or something similar) which you can use at Walmart, Murphy and ExxonMobil gas stations. You can load a balance into your account and then use the app to pay for your gas. It’s a great workaround for this issue and Walmart usually has great prices on gas.
Restaurants
You cannot charge $200 on a GC at a restaurant because they have to account for at least a 20% tip. As a result, the maximum amount that a restaurant will be able to charge is about $160. This will allow you to charge up to $40 for a tip. If the bill is larger than $160, you could use multiple GCs.
When not to use GCs
There’s three instances where I don’t suggest using GCs. The first is travel. If you have a Sapphire card (either one) or some other similar card that includes travel protection, you don’t want to mess around with GCs as you’ll lose that protection. The only exception to this if you’ve made a hotel reservation where some or all of the payment is not required until check in. At that point, you can safely use a GC without issue. Of course, they’ll want a card on file for incidentals and that’ll have to be a real credit card.
Somewhat related to the above is where you are buying something where you want that purchase protection to kick in. This is a feature that not every card has and that most people don’t know about it or use too often. However, if this is something that you could use on an expensive item, you may want to use the proper card.
Another scenario where I don’t suggest using GCs is where you are buying something that you might return an item. While it is technically possible for charges to be put back on the card, I just don’t trust it. If they say that they refunded it and it doesn’t show up on the card, it could be a nightmare to resolve. If you’re gonna get into this, you’ll probably have dozens of GCs and you don’t want to have to sort through them all to try to figure out the one that you bought the item with.
Auto-draining
Depending on your spending habits, you could wind up with a stack of GCs with small amounts like 85 cents, $3.17, $5.21, etc. What to do with them? One option is to look up the amounts for each card and then apply those small amounts to a bill or load them to your Amazon account or something like that. Time consuming, yes, so not ideal. Thankfully there’s a better way.
Auto-draining is when you can use the balance of a GC regardless of the purchase price. For example, you buy $50 worth of groceries but you only have $21.83 left on the GC. When you swipe the GC, the total of the GC will be applied and then the screen will show you that the balance that you owe. The big grocery store in Florida is Publix and they will auto-drain (AD). I keep an envelope of leftover GCs for us to bring to Publix to use them up. Walgreens will also AD them as well. Other grocery stores and pharmacies usually AD GCs but you never really know who will and won’t do that so it can’t hurt to try. I once went to a hamburger place and use 6 GCs to pay for a $18 order. The cashier actually thought it was funny.
Walmart on the other hand will not AD which is annoying because a lot of people (including us) shop there often. However, if you use self checkout, there is an option to charge a lower amount. If you don’t know the balance of the GC, you have to guess and just keep trying. Using the same example as above, if my order is $50 and my GC has less than that, Walmart will just decline it. If I select $20, it will go through but then I’ll have $1.83 left. From there I can just switch to another form of payment or I could try again for $5. That would get denied so I can try for $1. That would then leave 83 cents so if I tried again for $1, it’ll be denied. So while it’s not exactly a full AD, you can get pretty close.
If you shop at a place that won’t AD a GC like Walmart often, there’s ways around this.
Buying GCs with GCs
This sounds like something you shouldn’t be able to do but it’s certainly possible. There’s two primary reasons to do this. The first is to address the AD problem such as with Walmart. Since you know you’ll be going there, you could just use the Visa/MC GC and buy a Walmart GC. Now when you shop at Walmart moving forward, it will AD that Walmart GC. If you get gas at Walmart as well, this will also help you fill your car if you use Walmart pay. So if there’s any other stores where you can’t AD a GC, buy that store’s GC and use that.
The other reason to convert your Vias/MC GC to a store GC is if you are concerned about theft. I personally like to liquidate my GCs as soon as possible. If I buy $1600 worth of GCs, at least $1400 of that will be gone the same day. This is easier for us because we have to pay for health insurance each month. We have other bills of course so I’ll time my purchase of GCs with when I want to pay these bills. If there’s any balances left over, I’ll usually buy store GCs like Publix, Walmart or load the Amazon account. Otherwise, I’ll keep a max of $200 (one GC) out of the $1600 that I bought. This will limit my exposure if there is a theft issue. Even though this has never been a problem with the hundreds of GCs that we’ve bought, it’s still a possibility.
Now what do you do with them?
You found the sale, you found the GCs and you’ve used them all up. Now what? While this is a personal issue, I prefer to hold on to them for a little while. You never know if a payment will get kicked back or not processed correctly. Maybe you didn’t think you’d need to return an item but you did. Since I go through so many GCs, I put them in an envelope with the receipt and I write the month on it. I’ll hold on to them for several months and then I’ll throw them out after it’s been a while. I’ve never actually had to go back and dig up an old card but this requires so little effort, I think there’s no harm in being careful.
Conclusion
So there you have it, how to find them, how to buy them, how to use them and even what to do when you’re done with them. Just be sure that you don’t exceed the $25,000 total and that you remember that cable, internet, streaming and phone counts towards that total. You’ll be wasting your time if you go over that amount. Also make sure you use the correct card. There are other Ink cards but they won’t do anything for you. Obviously, you can buy other GCs or even other items at office supply stores and this will also count towards that total.
Of course, most people don’t have $25,000 worth of credit card purchases. No matter what the amount was, the end goal is to take purchases that would only get you 1.5x, 2x and 3x and turn them all into 5x purchases. That is why I say that the CIBC is one of the most powerful cards out there. While your primary goal should be on earning SUBs, getting 5x with GCs is what you should be doing whenever you’re not working on a SUB.
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