A number of interesting tidbits have been piling up lately, so rather than covering a single topic I’m simply going to give a rundown today of things on my mind…

Amex Financial Review

Gary, at View from the Wing, wrote up a terrific piece about Amex financial reviews (see “Preparing for the Dreaded American Express Financial Review“).  He argues that its something to get through rather than to fear.  This is a must read for anyone who manufactures spend.

10% off Amazon gift cards

This week OfficeMax is offering $5 off the purchase of two $25 Amazon gift cards.  Limit 1, but if you have a nice cashier they might let you split a purchase into multiple transactions.  Make sure to buy two $25 cards with each transaction.  Ideally, pay with a card that earns 5X at office supply stores (e.g. Ink Bold, Ink Plus, etc.).  Travel Summary has the scoop here.  I’ll run over to OfficeMax soon to see if I can buy these with OfficeMax gift cards.

10% off Lowes or $10 off $50 purchase

A number of coupons were posted to this SlickDeals thread.  Please go to that thread for details and questions.  Remember that you can also get a Movers coupon for 10% off by filling out an online form, and you can double or triple dip at Lowes for extra points.  Details here: Million Mile Madness: Banking on Lowe’s; and here: Maximizing Home Improvement Spend.

How to get the Citi Forward card

Last week I said that the Citi Forward card is great, but that you can’t get it unless you’re a college student (see “5X everywhere without gift cards, part 2: ThankYou Points“).  A number of people told me about a great workaround: Call Citi and ask to change your existing Citi card to a Forward card.  I can’t promise this will always work, but some people have reported success in blog comments and in this FlyerTalk thread.  5X restaurants, movie theaters, book stores (Amazon!), and more!

Hilton HHonors program only mostly dead

Indulge the Wanderlust reports that there are still deals to be had with the Hilton HHonors program despite recent huge devaluations.  I agree.  Details here.

Club Carlson whips the competition

LoyaltyLobby ran a series of posts analyzing the “earn and burn” rates of a number of hotel chains.  On the “earn” side, he estimated the number of points that would be earned at various properties with and without elite status and with and without a branded credit card.  He then looked at how many points were needed for free nights at various hotels (this is the “burn” side).  He then wrapped up the series by showing the amount of spend required within each chain to earn a free night.  Club Carlson beat the competition by a long shot.  Here’s an example graph showing the spend required for a free night based on someone with mid tier status:

It’s interesting that Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, and Marriott all came out about the same.  Club Carlson required less than half the spend of its competitors.  SPG required much, much more. 

Please see LoyaltyLobby’s series for details (or to complain about those details)

Best rate guarantee success

Angelina, author of Just Another Points Traveler, reports on her success in getting much cheaper hotel nights through the use of Best Rate Guarantees.  I need to try this trick out more often (I’ve only done a Best Rate Guarantee once).  Details here.

When shopping portals run big promotions, it sometimes pays to buy things just for the shopping portal points.  For example, early last year, the British Airways shopping portal briefly offered 36 points per dollar for first time users shopping at Nordstrom.  I qualified, so I bought over $4000 worth of headphones and GPS watches and I earned over 144,000 points.  The idea was to resell the merchandise in order to get most of my money back.  Whatever money was not recovered would be my cost for “buying” 144,000 points.  As it happened, I ended up making money on that deal, but that was due to a one time fluke (see “How Amazon paid me to collect miles“).

Next to credit card signups, buying and selling merchandise is probably the fastest way to rack up points quickly.  It’s not for everyone though!  It takes a big time commitment. It requires money up front that may not be recovered in time to pay your bills. It is risky in that whatever you buy may not sell well or may depreciate before you sell it.  And, it is stressful.  While you wait for items to sell and when you realize that your costs are higher than expected, your stress levels will rise.  And, things can go wrong.  To see some examples, please see this post that I wrote last August: “Frustration by Amazon.”

If you still want to buy and sell things despite the paragraph above, then one great option to consider is called Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA).  With this service, you send merchandise to Amazon so that they can sell it on your behalf.  You control the prices, but they handle all customer interactions, packaging and shipping, etc.  In return, they charge seller fees and handling fees.  The best thing about this service is that it requires far less work than selling each item individually on your own.  The second best thing about this service is that items tend to sell quickly since they qualify for Amazon free shipping.  This includes both Amazon’s policy of offering free shipping for orders over $25, and free two-day shipping for Amazon Prime members.

Fulfillment by Amazon Basics

• Sign up for FBA here.
• The first time you sell a particular product through FBA, you need to add it to your inventory.  Click “Inventory… Add a Product”.  Fill out the required fields.
• When you’re ready to send items to Amazon, you need to create an FBA shipment (Go to “Manage FBA Inventory” then click “Send/Replenish Inventory”).  A wizard like UI makes this easy.  Make sure to print out a packing slip for each box and include it at the top, inside, before sealing the box.

Understanding Fees

There are quite a few different fees that you may be subject to as a seller.  The most important thing to understand is that there are fees for selling on Amazon regardless of whether you use their FBA service.  These include Amazon referral fees and Variable closing fees.  Details about these fees can be found here.  Referral fees range from 6% of the sale price (for personal computers) to 25% for Kindle accessories.  The fee for most electronics-related categories is 8% and the majority of other categories is 15%.  Variable closing fees vary by item type, but are generally around $1 per item.  You will also have a fixed closing fee of 99 cents per item unless you sign up to become a Pro Merchant.

In addition to the referral fees and closing fees, you will encounter FBA fees.  These include Order Handling fees, Pick & Pack per unit fees, Weight Handling fees, and Oversize Item fees.  There are two good ways to figure out what these fees will be.  One option is to use the FBA Revenue Calculator.  Another option is to add the item to your FBA inventory, then go to the “Manage FBA Inventory” page and look at the “Fee Preview” that shows up next to each item.  Click on the fee shown to see fee details.

Tips for Saving Money

• Sell items with the lowest referral fees.  Computers are 6%.  Cameras, electronics, video game consoles, and unlocked cell phones are 8%.  Other categories are more expensive.
• Amazon charges a fixed closing fee of 99 cents for each item sold unless you become a Pro Merchant for $39.99 per month.  If you plan to sell 40 or more items in a month, sign up to be a Pro Merchant.  You can downgrade to the free service at any time. 
• Amazon charges some FBA fees per item (for most items), so you can reduce fees as a percentage of total by selling higher priced items. 
• Amazon charges modest FBA fees for storage and weight handling (for most items).  Sell items that are small and light to reduce these fees.
• Take advantage of Amazon’s Zero Fee Fulfillment.  Amazon says “Standard-Size units that sell for $300 or more on Amazon.com are eligible for Zero Fee Fulfillment. You pay nothing for Order Fulfillment fees, which include Order Handling, Pick & Pack, and Weight Handling. Other fees such as Inventory Storage, optional services, and Selling on Amazon fees still apply.“
• When sending items to Amazon for fulfillment, select the “Amazon-Partnered Carrier (UPS)” option for deeply discounted shipping.

Tips for Selling Effectively

• Sell items that are high on Amazon’s Best Seller lists.  When browsing Amazon.com within a department (“Camera, Photo & Video”, for example), you’ll see a small “Best Sellers” link.  By clicking that link, you’ll see the top selling items in that category.
• Sell items with good reviews.
• Before buying items, make sure that Amazon lets you list the item as “New”.  Some brands do not allow this.  I’d recommend not even bothering with a product if you can’t sell it as new (assuming it is new).  Even before you have the item, you can add it to your inventory awaiting shipment to Amazon.  By doing so, you will be led to the page where you are asked to select the item’s condition.  If “new” is not in the dropdown box, then abort.
• Price competitively, but not too competitively.  If you’re selling a very popular item, you can simply match the best price that qualifies for Amazon free shipping.  If you need your product to sell better, undercut that best price by a penny or a dollar or so.  Don’t undercut too much because you’ll risk entering a price war with other sellers.

Miscellaneous Other Tips

• Buy items in manageable sets.  For example, lets say you want to buy and sell 50 tablet computers and you’d guess that 5 can fit in a reasonably sized shipping box.  Consider making 10 separate orders of 5 each so that the packages will arrive in boxes you can reuse.  When they arrive, simply fill out the Amazon shipment order and slap the appropriate packing slip inside each box, and then tape the FBA label and shipping label to the outside.
• Watch out for returns. People will return things as “damaged” even if there is nothing wrong with them just so that they can do the return for free.  Your only option at that point is to request the item to be returned to you.  Then, if its in good condition, you can re-sell it.  In my experience, cheap stuff (toys, etc.) are less likely to be returned than more expensive stuff (tablets, GPS devices, etc.)

Reader Input

Do you have your own tips for selling on Amazon?  Please comment below!

Every now and then a shopping portal offers a fantastic deal that’s too good to pass up even if you don’t really want to buy anything.  As a result, I often find myself buying things just to earn points and miles.  I then sell those things with the goal of losing as little money as possible.  The end result is usually that I effectively buy miles at a very low cost.  For example, when the British Airways portal offered 36X at Nordstrom I bought and sold headphones and watches (see “How Amazon paid me to collect miles”).  And when the Southwest Rapid Rewards portal offered 15X at Sears I bought and sold tablet computers (see “Sears 15X: Frequent Miler’s almost final results”).

Currently, Sears is offering 10X through the Ultimate Rewards Mall.  Once again, this is a deal too good to pass up.  See “Sears 10X: Leveraging the Deal” for more info.

Thanks to HansGolden who will be co-presenting with me at the Chicago Seminars, I learned about a service called Fulfillment by Amazon.  With this service, Amazon lets you ship things to them to be sold and fulfilled via Amazon.com.  Amazon takes a cut of each sale and charges a small warehousing fee until the items sell.  When you have a lot of items to sell, this service is many times easier than selling one by one on EBay or Craigslist.  Plus, since Amazon has such a large shopping audience, items tend to sell quickly.  Unfortunately, not everything always goes as planned…

List as new, or not…

When I went to sell my Dr. Dre Headphones (bought at Nordstrom for 36X), I learned a lesson…

After logging into my Seller account, I clicked “Add a Product”:

I found the headphones I wanted to list and then started to fill out the item details.  In the box named “condition” I wanted to list the item as “New”, but I wasn’t given that option:

It turns out that certain brands do not allow resellers to list their items as new.  Amazon recommends selecting “Used – Like New” for this situation, but that would effectively devalue your product quite a bit.  The alternative is to find or create an alternate product page for the same product.  In my case, there already existed an alternate page so I was able to add my headphones as new to that page.  If you have to create a new product page on your own, you have to be a Pro Merchant (for $39.99 per month).  I haven’t tried that yet so I don’t know how much of a headache that would be.  In the end, I did OK with the headphones, but not as well as I would have done if I could have listed on the main product page.

Having learned from my prior mistake, when looking for items to buy and sell, I now first try to add a listing to Amazon to see if it will let me list the item as “New”.  If not, I look for a different item to buy.  Unfortunately, there are many items that do not allow resellers to list as new.

Amazon Mistakes

As a regular consumer, I used to think Amazon was an efficient, tightly run organization.  As a seller, I now have my doubts.  Here are some mistakes that have occurred:

• As I reported in the post “How Amazon paid me to collect miles,” Amazon somehow sold on my behalf far more watches than I sent to them.  I did the right thing and filed a support ticket, but it was closed with a message basically saying that it was too late, tough luck but I would have to keep their money.  Um…, OK, thanks!
• Later, the opposite happened, and Amazon lost one of the tablets I sent them.  I filed a support ticket and after about a month they gave up the search and paid me the amount I earned on the other tablets sold.  I was pretty happy with that outcome!
• Most recently, I requested that a returned tablet be sent back to me.  About a month has passed and they have yet to find it.  Maybe they’ll just give me the money again?

In the examples given above, I mostly benefited or came out even from Amazon’s mistakes, but one can’t count on that.  It’s a little scary to trust hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of merchandise to an organization that seems to slip up so easily!

Returns

In the post “Sears 15X: Frequent Miler’s almost final results” a reader named Sun commented:

I think your CPP calculation needs to wait until the return period for Amazon expires. Like Phil says… it is very risky selling commodity products like electronics.

Sun was so right.  Soon after that post, I received notice that two of my tablets had been returned as defective.  I requested that they be shipped back to me (the alternative is that Amazon disposes of them!), but only one of the two has made it back.  The other seems to be lost in the netherworld.  In going through that process, I also discovered that a few of the phantom watches I sold were also returned as defective, so I asked that they be shipped back to me as well.  Of the three watches and one tablet so far returned to me, it is clear that only one package was even opened by the consumers (and that watch works fine).  That means that for the rest, I can still sell them as new.  Or, maybe a give-away contest is in order?…

I believe that people return items as defective as a way of getting all of their money back when they change their minds about a purchase.  Regardless of whether it turns out alright in the end, returns are a huge hassle!  If you go into the buy/sell game be prepared to deal with headaches like these.

What did I miss?

I know some readers have much more experience than I do with buying and selling.  What other “gotchas” do people need to watch out for?

So let’s say you finally gave in and agreed to buy your son or daughter a new computer before school starts.  Not only that, but let’s say they’ve convinced you that they absolutely need the expensive new Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display.  If this is you, then you’re probably wondering how to maximize points and savings on this deal.  Let’s see what we can do…

Did you know you don’t have to buy Apple computers at Apple stores?  Let’s compare three options for buying the MacBook Pro with Retina Display: Apple Store, Best Buy, and Amazon.com.  Below are my recommendations for maximizing savings with each:

Apple Store

Apple lists the retail price of the MacBook Pro (256GB) at $2199 with free shipping.  Here’s how to cut that price down:

• uPromise:  Create an account at uPromise.com, search for Apple and click through to the Apple Store.  You should get 5% cash back.
• Eduction pricing:  You can qualify for education pricing if you’re a college student or a parent of a college student; or if you’re a teacher; or if you’re staff or faculty at a university.  You can find the full eligibility requirements here.  The education price for the MacBook Pro is $1999.  That’s a 9% discount!

Final expected cost (before sales tax): $1999 – 5% = $1899.05.  That’s a 13.6% discount off the retail price!

Best Buy

Best Buy currently lists the price of the same MacBook Pro at $2089.99.  That’s already 5% off of the retail price, but you can do better:

• Discount Gift Cards:  Search GiftCardGranny.com for Best Buy gift cards.  Currently, there are quite a few available for 6% off.  If you find good ones at PlasticJungle and you start at TopCashBack, you can do even better!  For simplicity, let’s assume that you buy $2000 worth of gift cards with an average of 6% savings. In other words, it should cost you about $1880 for $2000 worth of gift cards.
• uPromise: Just as with the Apple Store, you can get cash back at Best Buy as well.  Go to uPromise and search for Best Buy.  You should get 5% cash back.
• Best Buy Reward Zone: Members of Best Buy’s Reward Zone program receive points worth 2% of each purchase.  Points then become reward certificates that can be used to make future Best Buy purchases.  With this purchase you will earn approximately $40 worth of points.

Final expected cost (before sales tax): $2089.99 – 6% – 5% = $1860.10 (plus you get $40 in Best Buy credit).  One downside: by buying with gift cards, you do not get extended warranties or other protections offered by many credit cards.

Amazon.com

Amazon currently lists the MacBook Pro at $2194, but you can do better:

• Buy OfficeMax gift cards for 10% off:  You need an American Express business card with OPEN Savings for this part.  See “10% off everything and 7% off everything else” for details.  If you buy $2000 worth of gift cards, you will get $200 back in OPEN Savings.  Alternatively, you can buy discount gift cards to OfficeMax by shopping via GiftCardGranny.com. 
• Use OfficeMax gift cards in-store to buy Amazon gift cards: This step depends on having a friendly OfficeMax cashier willing to let you pay with gift cards (so do this at your own risk!).  This should be an even swap: $2000 of OfficeMax gift cards becomes $2000 in Amazon gift cards.  I recommend doing this in small batches over several visits.
• Click through the Hawaiian Airlines portal: You’ll earn 1 mile per dollar if you start your shopping here.  Pay with gift cards.

Final expected cost: $2194 – $200 = $1994 (plus about 2000 Hawaiian Airlines miles).  You will save even more if you live in a state in which Amazon does not charge sales tax.  Depending on the size of your local sales tax, this could make Amazon the cheapest route to go.  As with Best Buy, by buying with gift cards, you do not get extended warranties or other protections offered by many credit cards.

Bottom Line

The Best Buy and Amazon tricks could lead to a slightly better price than the Apple Store, but only with a lot of effort.  If you qualify for Apple’s education discount, I’d recommend doing this the easy way and follow the steps above under “Apple Store”.

Increasing Points

There are two more point-earning tricks you can choose from regardless of which store you decide to go with: 

1. Sign up for a credit card with a great sign-up bonus.  See great options on the “Best credit card offers” page.  Many of these cards require thousands of dollars of minimum spend in order to qualify for the sign-up bonus.  By using such a card for a big purchase like this, you’ll get far along towards the bonus!
2. If you have an Ink Bold credit card, use the trick described in the post “One card to rule them all” (please read that post if you haven’t already).  This way you’ll earn 5 points per dollar for this purchase.  In other words, you can earn approximately 10,000 Ultimate Rewards points for buying the MacBook laptop! 

Other Ideas?

Do you have a better way to save and earn points when buying Apple gear?  Comment below.

Last week I reported that I was launching several Frequent Miler Laboratory experiments (see “Laboratory Preparations”).  Most of the results are in and can be found on the Laboratory page (sort results by date to find the most recent).  For each significant finding, I’ll write up a new post to explain how to leverage it.  In this post, I’ll describe the OfficeMax experiments and the exciting results…

Experiment

This experiment had 3 parts:

• Portal: Go through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to OfficeMax to buy an OfficeMax gift card.  See if points are earned (despite T&C text saying no).
• Open Savings: Use American Express business credit card with OPEN Savings to make the purchase.  See if OPEN Savings credits my account with 5% back.
• Upgrade: Use the OfficeMax gift card in-store to buy to a different merchant’s gift card.

Portal

I logged into my Ink Bold account to shop the Ultimate Rewards Mall and clicked through to OfficeMax.com.  The Terms & Conditions suggested that this experiment would not work:

Not eligible on gift cards, gift certificates or any other similar cash equivalents.

And, in fact, as suggested by the T&C, I did not receive points.  You might think this happened because I didn’t use a Chase card for the purchase, but I rarely do and I almost always get points (see “Ultimate Question”).  Anyway, I’ve recorded this part of the experiment as a FAIL.

Open Savings

American Express business cards come with a feature not found on their personal cards: OPEN Savings.  These are rebates that are automatically credited to your account when you shop at certain merchants and fulfill the terms.  Merchants include Hyatt, Marriott, Hertz, and more.  You can see the full list of merchants and terms here.  Note that you do not really need a business to get a business credit card.  If you ever do any consulting, EBay selling, or anything that earns money for yourself or may do so in the future, you can apply for a business card as a “sole proprietor”.  A great side benefit is that American Express will let you get sign-up bonuses for both business and personal cards so you can often double your sign-up points!

Until recently, OPEN Savings gave 5% off for all OfficeMax purchases of $100 or more.  A great opportunity at the time was to go to OfficeMax stores to buy more valuable gift cards (Amazon, Visa, etc.) and automatically get 5% back.  Recently, though, they changed the terms.  I wrote about this in May in the post “Coming to an end: 5 percent off Amazon, EBay, and more…”  The new terms are (bolding is mine):

Get discount based on your total purchase as follows: 5% discount if a purchase is $250 or less and 10% discount if a purchase is more than $250. Valid only for purchases made online at officemax.com, officemaxsolutions.com or telephone orders. Discounts not available for purchases made at retail locations. Visit officemax.com/opensavings for OfficeMax terms and conditions.

This was a big blow to my gift card buying scheme since the scheme depended upon buying gift cards in-store (at retail locations).  However, the possibility of earning 10% back is very interesting.

In this experiment, I started small by buying a single physical $25 OfficeMax gift card.  It took a full week, but I did receive the expected 5% back from Open Savings.  Experiment result: SUCCESS.

Upgrade

Getting 10% back from OfficeMax purchases is nice, but even better is if you can get 10% back and upgrade to a more valuable gift card.  I visited an OfficeMax yesterday and bought a $25 Amazon gift card with my $25 OfficeMax gift card.  It worked like a charm, no questions asked.  Result: SUCCESS. 

Note that some readers reported that they had to argue with tellers who thought using gift cards was against the rules, but they were ultimately successful anyway.

Next Steps

Based on this experiment, I believe it is now possible to get 10% off all Amazon purchases!  I just ordered $300 worth of OfficeMax gift cards to prove that it will result in 10% back.  I will also follow up with another post detailing different ways to leverage this opportunity.  Finally, I’d love to find a points or cash back portal that credits gift card purchases!  If you order OfficeMax gift cards, please try various portals and let me know the results.  One reader has reported failure from uPromise and a number of airline portals (aa,ua,usair,delta,sw) so there may not be any good options, but it’s worth trying!

Last month, for two days only, the Southwest Airlines shopping portal (Rapid Rewards Shopping) offered 15 points per dollar when shopping at Sears.com.  In the post “Sears 15X: Leveraging the deal” I showed a number of ways one could capitalize on the opportunity.  In the post “Sears 15X: Free Southwest Companion Pass” I showed how one could earn a Southwest companion pass by buying and selling gift cards.  And, in the post “Sears 15X: Shopping for 110,000 points” I showed how one could earn 110,000 Southwest points by double-dipping: buy gift cards for 15X and then use them to buy merchandise for another 15X.

Frequent Miler’s Plan

I used the double dip technique to earn 30 points per dollar for my purchases.  In order to get to 110,000 Southwest points (so that I could earn a companion pass), I bought almost $3400 worth of tablet computers for resale and I bought some items for myself to make up the difference.  In the rest of this post I’ll give the details of what I bought for resale and the results so far.

What I bought

I bought 8 Asus Transformer Tablets for $399.99 each.  They were listed pretty high on Amazon’s best seller list and, at the time, they were selling on Amazon for the same price advertised by Sears.  Most importantly, I tested to see if Amazon would let me list the item as new.  Many brands don’t allow resellers to do that, so finding one that allowed it was a huge plus.

My total cost after 6% taxes came to: $3,386.37

Fulfillment by Amazon

Once I received the tablets, I shipped them to Amazon for their Fulfillment by Amazon program.  This is a great service in which Amazon handles all of the headaches of resale for you.  They take a cut, of course, but it’s well worth it in my opinion.  Usually, they take a 15% cut, but they charge less for electronics, and even less for computers.  Since the tablets were considered computers, I was charged only 6% for each sale.  I listed each tablet at $399 – only 99 cents less than Amazon was charging at the time.  I figured that if these were hot sellers, I had a chance of reselling at retail value.

Pretty much the moment the tablets were scanned in at Amazon, they sold out!  Unfortunately, one guy ordered two of them and then canceled his order.  That’s when Amazon messed up.  They only put one of the two tablets back into my inventory.  The one that was returned to inventory also sold quickly.  The remaining tablet currently shows as “receiving” in my shipping queue, so at least some part of Amazon.com believes I still own one more tablet.  I opened a problem ticket and have since received several messages saying simply that they are still researching the issue.

Ironically, this Amazon mess up is exactly opposite of one that happened to me a while ago.  At that time, Amazon thought I had far more watches in inventory than I had sent.  You can read about that adventure in this post: How Amazon paid me to collect miles.  Amazon still hasn’t attempted to get their money back for that mistake!

Results

Let’s look at the results in two ways: first let’s assume the tablet is a total loss, second I’ll assume the remaining tablet reappears and I manage to sell it for the same price as the others.  In reality, the price for this tablet on Amazon.com has dropped $15 so I may not do that well, but it should be close.

Total points earned: 3386.3 * 30 = 101,589 (remember, I earned additional points for personal items to get to the 110K mark)

Total costs for Sears’ purchase: $3,386.37

Total earnings from Amazon after shipping and fees:

• $2618.86 (without final tablet)
• $2993.92 (if I sell final tablet for $399)

Total loss:

• $767.51 (without final tablet)
• $392.45 (if I sell final tablet)

Cost per point:

• $767.51 / 101,589 points = .76 cents per point (without final tablet)
• $392.45 / 101,589 points = .39 cents per point (if I sell final tablet)

Analysis

Southwest points are worth 1 cent each when used for regular fares and 1.67 cents each when used for “Wanna Get Away?” fares.  Even if I don’t want to fly Southwest at all, I can exchange the points for various gift cards at a value of 1 cent per point.  So, even if I never use the companion pass (which I should get in July), buying Southwest points at .76 cents each was a bargain.  If my tablet reappears and I sell it for a decent price, it’s clear I’ll have made out like a bandit.

What if I sell the final tablet and take full advantage of the companion pass and “Wanna Get Away” fares?  In that case, I can theoretically get $3393 worth of flights for roughly $400 in expenses!

How did you do?

I know others bought and sold items like I did.  How well did it work out for you?  Comment below.

This past Saturday I posted a great offer: Up to 14.5% off Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  This week only, OfficeMax has a deal where you can buy two $25 Nook or Kindle gift cards and get $5 back.  That alone amounts to a respectable 10% discount. Since the cards can be used at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, respectively, this is a great deal.  Depending upon how you pay for the cards, you can do even better:

• American Express business card with OPEN Savings: 5% back on purchases of $100 or more at OfficeMax (until June 15).
• Chase Ink: 5 points per dollar at office supply stores
• American Express SimplyCash card: 5% cash back for office supplies plus 5% back with OPEN Savings.  That amounts to a 19% total discount!

Visits to OfficeMax on Sunday were mostly disappointing.  OfficeMax hadn’t yet figured out how to actually ring up these discounts.  A few people managed to get the discounts anyway, but others left empty handed.

Problem fixed

OfficeMax fixed their register issue.  They now have a sheet of paper with a bar code that applies the discount when scanned.  I’ve heard from a number of people who have successfully bought a bunch of gift cards with this discount.  A few stores limited people to no more than 6 cards, but most stores had no limit.  I walked out of a local OfficeMax yesterday with 40 gift cards!  Today, my mom (AKA Mom Miler) bought 20 cards at an OfficeMax near her!

Finding cards

The main problem you’ll face now is that many stores are sold out.  I highly recommend calling before making a trip.  Once in the store look near the e-book reader displays as well as at the gift card rack.  They tend to put e-book gift cards in both places.  Also, ask a manager if there are any more.  I only found 8 in the store before I asked a manager who dug up 32 more for me!

Which card to use?

If you have the SimplyCash card, that’s clearly the best option.  Otherwise, the Ink and the Amex business card options are very close.  With the Amex cards you get 5% back plus the usual 1 point per dollar from your card.  With the Ink you get just the 5 points per dollar.  If you value points at the Fair Trading Price of 1.31 cents each, then each option is about the same.  Go with whichever card gives you points that you value the most.

A reader who goes by bitachu tipped me off to this upcoming OfficeMax sale.  Starting tomorrow and until May 12th, you can buy Amazon Kindle or B&N Nook gift cards for 10% off.  Specifically, they advertise that you will save $5 when buying two $25 gift cards.  This is interesting because, I believe that Kindle gift cards can be used for any Amazon.com purchases and that Nook gift cards can be used for any Barnes & Noble purchases.

Double dip the discounts with OPEN or Ink

It’s not clear yet whether OfficeMax will have a per person limit, but if they allow at least 3 sets to be bought at once, you can increase the discount by using an American Express business credit card with OPEN Savings.  This will give you a 5% statement credit for all OfficeMax purchases of $100 or more.  It’s nice of OfficeMax to offer this deal before the in-store OPEN Savings benefit goes away as I reported yesterday.  When you stack a 10% discount with a 5% discount, the total discount comes to 14.5%.  Not bad!

Alternatively, use a Chase Ink credit card to get 5 points per dollar at office supply stores!

One of my favorite tricks for saving money while increasing credit card spend is to buy gift cards at OfficeMax using one of my American Express business cards.  Amex business cards come with a perk called OPEN Savings.  With this program, you automatically receive rebates in the form of statement credits when using your card at certain merchants.  With OfficeMax, you currently get back 5% of any purchases of $100 or more (see image).

I regularly stop by my local OfficeMax to buy gift cards totaling $100 or more. If you can find gift cards you can really use, this can be a big win.  Even $200 Visa gift cards with $6.95 fees are a decent deal: After 5% cash back, you end up with 1.7% in savings.

Sadly, though, this deal is coming to an end.  A friend who goes by the handle greek2me sent me this notice that he received in the mail with his SPG card bill:

Starting June 15th, in store purchases won’t count!  Since OfficeMax doesn’t sell gift cards online (other than their own), this will effectively kill the gift card gravy train.

On the other hand, they will start giving 10% back for purchases greater than $250 made online.  This could be quite lucrative if/when OfficeMax carries Free After Rebate products, especially if we stack this discount with points or cash back from a shopping portal.  Also, OfficeMax frequently sells items with 100% back in rewards.  Any time they have enough of these to total $250, I’ll let you know! 

I also wonder what would happen if we bought OfficeMax gift cards online and then used them in store.  Would they allow purchase of other gift cards using their gift card?  It’s unlikely, but you never know.  I guess it’s time to add new experiments to the Frequent Miler Laboratory to-do list!

Stay informed:
Follow me on Twitter / Like me on Facebook / Join the Club

If you’re new to Frequent Miler, please start here

• In case you somehow missed it, today only you can buy a $10 Amazon gift card for only $5!  Hat Tip to RhondasBuzz.com (I would have provided a link, but her site appears to be broken right now).  View the deal here: https://local.amazon.com/palm-beaches (or any other Amazon Local location).
• Reader John W tipped me off about an awesome cash back site called TopCashBack which offers better cash back rates for gift card purchases and resales than ShopAtHome, MyDealsAndCoupons, etc.  As a result, I’ve updated the post Gift cards: buy low, sell high, get cash back.  If anyone is in the process of buying and selling gift cards, you should take a look as the cash back rates are better through TopCashBack.  (disclosure: I’ve used a referral link here which will give me a whopping $5 if you click through, signup, and make a purchase).