Early this week I set out to find the perfect Visa gift cards.  Now that Visa gift cards can have PINs (see “Gift card PINs“), they are once again a great way to buy points cheaply and/or run up spend to meet minimum spend requirements or big spend thresholds.

Here are the characteristics of the “perfect” gift cards that I’m searching for:

• Low fee as a % of total value.  The ideal gift card would have a fee equal to, or less than, 1% or its maximum value.
• Ability to earn credit card category bonus points (see “Best Category Bonuses“).
• The ability to earn store reward points (such as fuel points) would be a big plus.
• Ability to set the card’s PIN quickly and easily.  I would like to be able to pickup the gift card at one store and then drive over to Walmart to load it to my Bluebird account with minimal fuss in between.
• High denomination.  Bluebird cards can be loaded up to $1000 per day (and $5000 per month) at Walmart.  If I’m going to visit Walmart anyway, I’d like to load the full $1000 each time.  The fewer gift cards it takes to do this, the better.  In other words, a $1000 gift card would be ideal (but I’ve never seen those in stores), and $500 gift cards are really good.  Cards with lower values are much less attractive.

I visited Kroger, Speedway, OfficeMax, and Sears.  I expect to do more exploratory trips to other stores in the near future, but for now let me describe what I found…

Kroger

At my local Kroger grocery store, I found a Visa card from U.S. Bank loadable up to $500 with a $5.95 fee.  Even though I could have paid with a card that earned a grocery store category bonus, I paid with a generic Amex gift card just to see if it would work (it did).  I was happy to see that I earned 500 fuel points from the purchase!  Each time I fill up my tank at a participating gas station, I can spend 100 fuel points to save 10 cents per gallon.  I tend to fill about 12 gallons at a time, so I would save $1.20 per fill-up.  With 500 fuel points, I could fill-up my tank 5 times, so the fuel points earned are worth $1.2 x 5 = $6 to me.  That’s pretty convenient since it exactly cancels out the $5.95 card fee!  If you have a larger fuel tank, you could save even more.

This was my first time setting a PIN on a gift card, so it took me quite a while.  First, I registered the card online using my iPhone’s browser.  I hoped that there would be an easy way to set the PIN online, but if it’s there, I didn’t find it.  Next, I called the number on my gift card activation receipt, but I was told to call Visa at 866-952-5653 instead.  At that number, after navigating through a few voice prompts, I was able to set my PIN over the phone.  If I had started with the correct phone number from the get-go, I could have set the PIN in two minutes altogether.

Later in the day, at Walmart, I used this gift card to load $500 to my Bluebird card without any trouble.

Speedway

After Kroger, I stopped at at a Speedway gas station.  They had several reloadable prepaid cards on display, but I believe those require setting up an account in order to get the PIN.  I didn’t want to do that.  The best non-reloadable I could find was the OneVanilla Prepaid Visa Card.  This one is loadable up to $500 with a $4.95 fee.  I paid with a credit card that earns bonus points at gas stations and was asked to show both my credit card and my driver’s license.  Sadly, I did not earn Speedy Rewards for this purchase.

Again, I used my iPhone’s browser to register the card online.  This time, there was an option to manage the PIN, but when I clicked it, it simply said that the PIN would be set the first time I made a PIN based purchase.  In other words, whatever PIN I type in when I first use the card would be the PIN that could be used from then on. 

Later in the day, at Walmart, I used this gift card to load $500 to my Bluebird card without any trouble.  I wondered, though, if the card would work without registering it online at all.  So, the next day I bought two more of these cards and visited Walmart again, but this time without registering the cards.  Both cards worked perfectly!  As far as ease in setting the PIN, it doesn’t get any better than that!

OfficeMax

I used to occasionally buy $200 Visa gift cards at OfficeMax (with $6.95 fees) using credit cards that earn category bonuses at Office Supply stores.  However, when I visited OfficeMax on Monday, the highest denomination cards they had were $100 Visa cards from MetaBank (with $5.95 fees).  Since it is sometimes possible (but not always!) to buy gift cards at OfficeMax with OfficeMax gift cards, it was worth finding out if these cards were any good.  So, I bought one.

Even though I didn’t think it would work, I tried to register this card’s PIN with the same number I had called earlier to register the card from Kroger (866-952-5653).  Not surprisingly, it didn’t work.  The automated system did not recognize the card number.  So, instead, I dialed a number that I found on the paper insert inside the gift card package (888-524-1283).  As with the Kroger experience, the system was fully automated, and after navigating several prompts I was able to set the PIN.  At Walmart, the card and PIN worked perfectly.

Sears

At Sears, I visited the secret gift card rack and picked up a $100 Visa card with a $5.95 fee.  This card looked almost exactly like the one from OfficeMax, except for two differences.  One difference was that this card was issued by University National Bank (as opposed to MetaBank).  Another difference was that the packaging on this card advertised the ability to manage the card with GoWallet (see my post “GoWallet.com simplifies your gift card life“).

I took the card to the register and tried to pay with my ShopYourWay Rewards points.  The cashier was happy to try it, but the system didn’t allow it.  I know from past experience that Sears’ gift cards do work, but I didn’t have any with me so I paid with a credit card that is offering me bonus points this quarter at department stores (hopefully this will qualify).

I started up the GoWallet app on my iPhone and I registered my new card.  I tried to use the QR code scanner to register automatically, but it didn’t work.  I had to type in the numbers.  I had hoped that the app would let me set the PIN, but I couldn’t find that option anywhere.  Instead, I tried calling the number I used with the OfficeMax gift card (888-524-1283).  It worked!  I successfully set the PIN.

Walmart

At Walmart, I used their ATM to swipe reload my and my wife’s Bluebird cards (see “Bluebird swipe reloads via ATM“).  I tried to use more than one gift card in a single transaction, but that attempt failed.  Instead, I successfully loaded each gift card to my Bluebird cards one at a time (with a completely separate transaction each time).

Summary

Each of the options I tried have their pros and cons, but overall I’d say that the cards from Kroger and Speedway were the best.  Let’s look at each characteristic:

Low Fee

The OneVanilla card from Speedway had the lowest fee (1%).  The Visa gift card from Kroger was very close behind with a 1.2% fee.  The cards from OfficeMax and Sears trailed way behind with their 6% fees.

Category bonus

5X category bonuses are available at all of the locations I visited except for Sears, but it is possible to buy Sears’ gift cards at other locations in order to get 5X bonuses, and then use those gift cards at Sears to buy Visa cards.  So, I’d say that all options are roughly equal here, with the caveat that the best category bonus depends on which types of points you prefer and which credit cards you have.  For example, I’m a huge fan of Ultimate Rewards points, so, all else being equal, I would always opt to earn those over Citi ThankYou points.

Store Rewards

In all of my purchases I presented my store loyalty card, but only Kroger rewarded me with points (fuel points, in this case).  Since the points earned are worth at least the amount of the card fee (to me, anyway), the rewards make a big possitive difference in the value of shopping for gift cards at Kroger.

Easy PIN setup

The easiest PIN setup by far was with the OneVanilla card from Speedway since it required no setup at all!  I was able to use the cards at Walmart literally right out of the box.  Awesome.  With the other 3 cards, setting the PIN required the following: dialing the correct phone number; following voice prompts to enter the card number, expiration date, and security number; wading through menus for the option to set a PIN; and then entering the PIN twice.  It sounds worse than it is.  My phone records show that I spent only 2 minutes on each call.  So, none of the options were terrible, but the OneVanilla card was the best.

High Denomination

Kroger and Speedway sell gift cards with denominations as high as $500.  This is a convenient amount since it only requires two transactions to load a Bluebird card to $1000 at the Walmart ATM.  Dan’s Deals says that at the checkout lane you can use up to 3 cards per transaction, so it’s possible to fill up a Bluebird card with one transaction and two swipes by going to a live cashier.  With the $100 cards from OfficeMax and Sears you would need to do four separate transactions in the checkout lane, or ten transactions at the ATM.  Either way, that would be painful.

Conclusion

The Kroger and Speedway stores near me offer $500 Visa gift cards, and I consider each to be good deals.  The OneVanilla option at Speedway (and also at many other stores) is better if your main goal is convenience.  Being able to skip the step of registering a PIN is great.  If overall cost is your main concern, then the Kroger option is better as long as you can make good use of the awarded fuel points.

There are many other gift card options out there, including $1000 Visa gift cards from GiftCardMall.com, $200 gift cards at Staples and Office Depot, and more.  I’ll continue to investigate and report on other options, but I welcome reader contributions as well!  What have you found that works well or that doesn’t work at all?  Please comment below.

Deal ends tomorrow (Tuesday, 4/16)

OfficeMax is currently offering a free $25 OfficeMax gift card with any online purchase of $200 or more.  Enter promo code GIFTCARD at checkout.  Limit 1 per customer.

With most promotions like these, OfficeMax excludes technology and gift cards, but they have no such exclusions this time.  I was able to order OfficeMax and Lands’ End gift cards, and I successfully used the promo code:

If you spend $250 or less, pay with any credit card that offers bonus points at Office Supply stores (see “Best Category Bonuses“).  If you spend more than $250, your best option is to pay with an American Express business card that offers OPEN Savings.  With orders over $250, you’ll get a 10% refund as a statement credit from American Express (but only a 5% refund if you spend $250 or less).  The best deal of all is if you use the American Express Simply Cash card which offers both an office supply category bonus (5%) and OPEN Savings!  Keep in mind that OfficeMax OPEN Savings apply only to online orders.

What’s the best deal?

For this analysis, I’ll assume you have an American Express business card, but not the Simply Cash card.  Let’s look at some scenarios:

Scenario 1: Buy $200 in OfficeMax gift cards

OfficeMax does not charge any fees with their own gift cards, so the total would come to $200 exactly.  If you pay with an Amex business card, you’ll get 5% back, and if you use the promo code, GIFTCARD, you’ll get $25 additional value:

• Total Cost: $200 – 5% (OPEN Savings) = $190
• Value: $200 + $25 = $225
• Cost as % of Value = $190 / $225 = 84.4%
• Savings = 15.6%

Scenario 2: Buy $200 in OfficeMax gift cards & $50 in merchant gift cards

OfficeMax charges a 99 cent fee for each merchant gift card they sell.  If you pay with an Amex business card and spend more than $250, you’ll get 10% back.  So, a good way to get just over $250 is to buy $200 worth of OfficeMax gift cards and $50 worth of merchant gift cards (Home Depot, Nordstrom, Lands End, etc.):

• Total Cost: $250.99 – 10% (OPEN Savings) = $225.89
• Value: $250 + $25 = $275
• Cost as % of Value = $225.89 / $275 = 82.1%
• Savings = 17.9%

Scenario 3: Buy $275 in OfficeMax gift cards

If you pay with an Amex business card and spend more than $250, you’ll get 10% back. So, let’s look at the numbers if you buy only OfficeMax gift cards:

• Total Cost: $275 – 10% (OPEN Savings) = $247.50
• Value: $275 + $25 = $300
• Cost as % of Value = $247.50 / $300 = 82.5%
• Savings = 17.5%

Scenario 4: Buy $200 OfficeMax gift cards without Amex OPEN Savings

I realize that not all readers have American Express business cards, so let’s look at the optimal savings that can be achieved without OPEN Savings.  Buy $200 worth of OfficeMax gift cards:

• Total Cost: $200
• Value: $200 + $25 = $225
• Cost as % of Value = $200 / $225 = 88.9%
• Savings = 11.1%

Still pretty good, especially if you earn 5 points per dollar from your credit card at office supply stores! 

Merchant Gift Cards

Here is a list of merchant gift cards sold online by OfficeMax (quoted from this SlickDeals post):

Applebee’s, Bass Pro, Bed Bath & Beyond, BJ’s Restaurants, Black Angus, Brinker / Multi-Brand Design Gift Card, Buca Di Beppo, Build A Bear, Cabela’s, Catherines Gift Card, Chili’s Gift Card, Claire’s, Cold Stone, Cracker Barrel, Express, Fandango, IHOP, iTunes, JCPenney Gift Card, Jiffy Lube, Justice / Limited Too Gift Card, Kohls, Lands’ End, Lane Bryant Gift Card, Macaroni Grill Gift Card, Maggiano’s Gift Card, Michaels, Nike, Nordstrom, OfficeMax, Omaha Steaks, On the Border Gift Card, Outback Steakhouse, PF Chang’s, Pizza Hut, Red Robin, Regal Entertainment, REI Gift Card, Ruby Tuesday, Sephora, SpaFinder, Starbucks, TGI Fridays, The Home Depot, TJ Maxx

From a resale perspective, the best options are probably Nordstrom and Home Depot.  For gift card churning I like Lands’ End since their gift cards can be used at Sears and Kmart (see “the mysterious gift card rack“).

OfficeMax gift cards

Yes, OfficeMax gift cards can be used in-store to buy other gift cards, but only if the cashier / store manager allows it.  I’ve never had any trouble, but many readers have said they have been turned away.  One good option may be to go to an OfficeMax store to buy $200 Visa gift cards and pay $200 of each gift card with a credit card and pay the $6.95 fee with OfficeMax gift cards.  I haven’t tried this, but it might work.

I do not think that OfficeMax.com would allow you to use OfficeMax gift cards online to buy other gift cards, but if you try it please let me know.

Portal Shopping

Don’t bother trying to go through an online portal to OfficeMax to get additional points or cash back when buying gift cards.  Numerous experiments have shown that OfficeMax doesn’t pay out for these.

Office supply stores and travel hacking are a strange combination, but in the past year or two they’ve been great together.  Thanks to credit card bonus categories, Easy Rebates, big portal promotions, Vanilla Reload cards, and more, office supply stores have been a fantastic source of free or cheap points.  While many of these deals have gone away, there are still some great opportunities.  For example, here are a couple:

1. Take advantage of American Express’ OPEN Savings program (automatically part of most Amex business cards) at OfficeMax.com to get 10% back on orders of more than $250.  This way you can get credit card rewards from your purchase (as always), plus sizable savings.  And, OfficeMax.com recently began selling third party gift cards…
2. Take advantage of credit cards that offer extra points at Office Supply stores (Chase Ink cards, for example), and go through an online portal to Staples.com to make purchases.  Staples.com carries some third party gift cards, and their e-gift cards are fee-free.  I’ve successfully gone through TopCashBack to Staples to get 5.5% cash back plus I’ve earned 5 points per dollar using my Chase Ink card!

So, now that Office Depot and OfficeMax are merging, what’s next?  Here are my completely uninformed guesses of what will happen:

• The new entity will be called Office Depot and will act like Office Depot in terms of what products are sold, the rewards program, etc.
• Many stores will close, especially where Office Depot and OfficeMax are currently in close proximity.
• We will lose the ability to save up to 10% via Amex OPEN Savings.  Of course it’s possible that Amex will negotiate a similar deal with the new entity, but my guess is that this benefit will go away entirely.
• There will be short term deals as stores close and as stores formerly known as OfficeMax get rid of whatever inventory is not carried by Office Depot.
• OfficeMax’s MaxPerks rewards program will be phased out.  I expect that they’ll give people time to spend their MaxPerks rewards, but will issue new rewards as Office Depot Worklife rewards.

So, yeah, I expect that most of this will be bad news to consumers and pointaholics.  For people who live in places with either OfficeMax or Office Depot, but not both, there may be some good news in that whatever deals are available should be available to them.  On the whole, though, its probably not a good thing.  On the optimistic front, maybe this bigger entity will work harder to compete with Staples and we’ll see some new, great opportunities.  We’ll see…

Hat tip to Tweeter named Mark for coming up with the name “Office DeMax”. I like it!

UPDATE: DEAL IS DEAD. Sort of.  Between 10:30 and 10:50 am EST today (Jan 17), OfficeMax updated their registers to correctly apply only one $10 discount to each purchase of two cards.  Now, the purchase of two $50 MasterCard gift cards costs $99.90 instead of $89.90.  This isn’t a terrible deal, but it’s not the great deal it was before.

Until Saturday, January 19th, OfficeMax is offering $10 off each $50 MasterCard when you buy two.

Based on the in-store ad (shown above), it seems that you should get $10 off when you buy two $50 MasterCard gift cards.  In fact, though, you get $10 off each MasterCard for a total of $20 off.  Since each card comes with a $4.95 activation fee, the total cost to buy two cards comes to $89.90.  In other words, you get a 10% discount when buying money!

My experience

Multiple readers reported this deal to me, so I visited OfficeMax yesterday to check it out.  The gift card rack had oodles of $50 cards available (yes, “oodles”, I counted).  Initially I bought two cards and, as readers had told me, the total automatically came to $89.90.  No coupon or pleading was necessary. I paid with my Ink Bold card in order to get 5 points per dollar from the purchase.

After a visit to Target, I returned to OfficeMax to conduct a couple of experiments.  I wanted to see 1) could I pay with the same MasterCard gift cards I had just bought? And, 2) could I buy more than 2 at a time?

I brought four cards to the counter and asked the teller to ring them up in two separate transactions.  She was more than happy to do so.  With the first transaction, I swiped one of my $50 gift cards to pay, and the register automatically drained that card of its $50 and then asked me for the final $39.90 which I paid with my Ink Bold.  Even though I could have used my other previously bought gift card for the rest of the first transaction or for part of the second transaction, I just went ahead and paid the rest with my Ink Bold.

My experiments proved a couple of things.  First, if you have a lot of patience, it is possible to harvest gift cards by buying them with gift cards in order to make your total gift card balance grow.  Second, you can buy more than two at a time by asking the cashier to split the purchases into multiple transactions.

Another Trick

One reader reported being able to use an OfficeMax gift card to buy these MasterCard gift cards.  They suggested buying an OfficeMax gift card at 10% off (via this trick) and then using it to buy the MasterCard gift cards.  Unfortunately, not all OfficeMax stores allow buying gift cards with OfficeMax gift cards.  Also, I doubt there is time to get the OfficeMax gift card through the mail before this deal ends.

Liquidating Gift Cards

DansDeals writes about this OfficeMax deal and suggests liquidating the cards through Amazon Payments.  Other options include loading them into your Serve account, loading your Target Amex, using them to buy reload cards, etc.  Unfortunately, all of those approaches can be pretty tedious if you buy many of these cards.

Personally, I may use them to actually buy stuff as needed.  In general, I would only use one when a purchase comes to $50 or more.  This way, whenever I use a card, I’ll drain it completely and throw it away, and I never have to wonder how much is left on each card.  Most cash registers know how to handle these cards automatically and will drain the card completely before asking for a second form of payment.  Exceptions include gas stations, restaurants, and hotels.  In those cases, you should ask a person to specifically charge exactly $50 to your gift card.

Blogger U Can Fly Free 2 alerted me to this deal (see his post here).  On Black Friday (Nov 23rd) and Saturday (if any are left) OfficeMax will let you buy a $100 Visa or MasterCard for $15 off.  Since they charge a $5.95 fee for each Visa or MasterCard gift card, the total should come to $90.95.  It’s rare to get a 9% discount when buying money!

Don’t forget to use a credit card that earns extra points at office supply stores!

Note some restrictions:

• Limit one $15 reward per customer.  Reports from SlickDeals say that last year the “reward” was a discount off the purchase price (not OfficeMax rewards) and that some stores allowed customers to buy more than one.
• Offer valid in store only.  Self explanatory.
• Limit 35 cards per store unless prohibited by law.  I think this means that each store will only sell 35 discounted gift cards.  Once they’ve sold 35 they will stop offering the discount.  I doubt many stores have that many on the rack anyway so it may not really matter.  I am a bit curious which States prohibit the 35 item limit…
• Customers may not purchase multiple Visa gift cards and/or MasterCard gift cards in denominations that cumulatively amount to $100 or more to meet the minimum purchase requirement.  This means that if you can’t find any $100 cards, you can’t buy two $50 cards and hope to get the discount.
• MaxPerks Rewards are not redeemable for this offer.  If you’ve earned MaxPerks rewards from previous deals, you can’t use those rewards to buy these gift cards.

Thanks Duc!

Last week I outlined ways to earn hundreds of thousands of points and miles through gift card churning (see “The art of gift card churning @ #chicagoseminars“).  Today, I have a number of specific updates for people who have taken gift card churning to heart…

Kohl’s triple dip not working

In my recent post “How to maximize your Freedom 5X purchases” I suggested that it might be possible to earn 25 points per dollar at Kohl’s by going through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to Kohl’s to buy Kohl’s gift cards with your Freedom card, and then go through the mall again to use the gift cards.  However, a reader reported on Saturday that this trick didn’t work for them.  They received points for using a gift card at Kohl’s, but not for buying a gift card.  One reader experience doesn’t prove that the triple dip won’t work for everyone, but its probably not worth the risk.

PlasticJungle / TopCashBack drops to 2.5%

PlasticJungle is a gift card buyer / reseller.  They’re a great resource if you have unused gift cards you’d like to sell (at less than face value).  And, they’re a great resource if you want to buy gift cards at a discount (which is a great way to save money almost anywhere).  Until recently, a cash back portal (TopCashBack) offered 4% cash back at PlasticJungle if you started from their site.  Cash back is awarded whether you buy gift cards from Plastic Jungle, or sell them.  Recently, TopCashBack reduced the payout to 2.5% cash back.  Accordingly, I’ve updated the post “Gift cards: buy low, sell high, get cash back” which can always be found on my Resources tab:

Walmart gift cards cheaper than usual

Lately, $500 Walmart gift cards have been on sale on EBay for about 5% off of face value (e.g. $475).  That’s pretty good, especially considering that purchases of merchant gift cards on EBay earn EBay bucks, which means you get an additional 1.9% rebate (2% of $475 = $9.5, which equals 1.9% of $500).  The catch is that the sellers don’t ship the cards for a month or more.

One reason that discount Walmart gift cards are interesting is that Walmart sells Visa gift cards online and will let you pay with gift cards.  The best value, currently, is to buy $200 Visa or MasterCard gift cards for $206.88 each.  This amounts to a 3.44% fee.  However, if you pay with a Walmart gift card that you bought at a 6.9% discount, you are still well ahead!

OfficeMax tightens up

In the posts “10% off everything and 7% off everything else” and “How to buy points for free” I described a few great ways to leverage the American Express OPEN Savings program now that those savings apply only to online orders at OfficeMax.  The trick involves buying OfficeMax gift cards online (for 10% cash back) and then upgrading them in-store (e.g. use them to buy better gift cards).  I haven’t had any trouble upgrading at my local OfficeMax, but a number of readers have reported that their OfficeMax stores don’t allow it.  In fact, fellow blogger Delta Points tells me that his OfficeMax used to allow it, but has recently cracked down.  If you’re thinking of trying this technique, consider starting very small to check whether your local OfficeMax store is upgrade-friendly.

A reader contacted me recently asking how he can maximize points earned at semi fast food places like Panera, Chipotle, Subway, etc.  He recognizes that restaurants like these aren’t available through point-earning dining programs, but he’d still like to earn more than 1 or 2 points per dollar.  Overall, he averages about $130 per month at restaurants like these. 

Of course, the first thing to do is to join whatever loyalty program each food place offers.  Beyond that, let’s look at some options…

Simplest approach: Use a credit card that offers extra points for dining

Off the top of my head, here are a couple of good options:

• The Chase Sapphire Preferred offers 2 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar at restaurants, plus a 7% annual dividend so it really returns 2.14 points per dollar.
• Even better, the Citi Forward card offers 5 ThankYou points per dollar at restaurants (including fast food).  ThankYou points are not generally as valuable as Ultimate Rewards, but with an earning rate over twice as high as the Sapphire Preferred, it’s still worth considering.

With the Citi Forward card, $130 per month will become 7800 points per year.  When you’re ready to redeem points, you can sign up for the Citi ThankYou Premier card to make your ThankYou points even more valuable.  With the Premier card, 7800 points are worth over $103 in airfare.

Better approach: Buy gift cards strategically

Gift cards for places like Panera, Chipotle, and Subway tend to be readily available at grocery stores, drug stores, etc.  Take advantage of your credit card bonus categories to buy gift cards for the places you visit the most.  Here are some examples:

• Use a Hilton HHonors Amex to buy gift cards at a grocery store, drug store, or gas station.  You’ll earn 6 Hilton points per dollar.  If you buy from certain grocery stores, you’ll also earn fuel points for saving money on gas!
• Use a Chase Freedom card within its quarterly bonus categories to buy gift cards.  For example, until December 31st 2012, the Freedom card offers 5 points per dollar at hotels, airlines, Best Buy, and Kohl’s (up to $1500 in spend per quarter).  At Kohl’s you can buy gift cards and earn 5 points per dollar.
• Use a Chase Ink card to buy gift cards at an office supply store such as Staples, OfficeMax, or Office Depot.  You’ll earn 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar.
• Use a Blue Cash Preferred card to buy gift cards at a grocery store. You’ll earn 6% cash back. At certain grocery stores, you’ll also earn fuel points for saving money on gas.

My preference among these options is to earn Ultimate Rewards points with the Chase Chase Freedom or Ink card.  With either card, $130 per month will become 7800 points per year. With the Ink Bold, Ink Plus, or Freedom (when paired with one of these Ink cards or with a Sapphire Preferred card), your Ultimate Rewards points can be transferred to high value loyalty programs such as Hyatt, United, Amtrak, or British Airways.  With these programs, you can easily get at least 2 cents per point value for travel.  So, those 7800 points could be worth $156 or more in travel.  Note that you can expand this idea well beyond dining options via the “One card to rule them all” trick.

Advanced approach: Buy and upgrade

Every now and then there is an opportunity to buy gift cards at a heavy discount or to get lots of points.  One recent example is when Sears offered 10 points per dollar through the Ultimate Rewards Mall.  Not all stores do so, but Sears is known to award points for gift card purchases.  Here’s how to take advantage of a deal like this:

• Go through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to Sears and order gift cards in order to get 10 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar (during 10X promotions)
• Pay with the best credit card option.  For example, you could setup the US Bank Cash+ card to give 6.25% back at department stores.  That would be a great way to boost your savings!
• With gift cards in-hand, go to Sears or Kmart and find the gift card racks.  Use your Sears gift card to buy the gift cards you really want.  Note that at Sears it can be very hard to find a gift card rack that sells anything but Sears cards, but once found I’ve never had trouble buying them.  At Kmart, on the other hand, the gift cards are easy to find, but not all cashiers will allow you to buy gift cards with gift cards.  I’d recommend filling up the cart with other stuff (groceries, etc.) to increase your odds for success.

By going through this admittedly convoluted process, $130 per month in semi fast food dining can become 15,600 Ultimate Rewards points and $97.50 cash back!  Of course, that’s contingent upon 1) Sears repeating its 10X promotion; 2) Sears or Kmart carrying the gift cards you need; and 3) Sears or Kmart allowing you to buy gift cards with gift cards…

A variation on this approach is to use an American Express business card with OPEN Savings.  Use that card to buy over $250 worth of OfficeMax gift cards at a time at OfficeMax.com and you’ll automatically get 10% cash back.  Then, go to OfficeMax and use those gift cards to buy the gift cards you really want.  Caution: many OfficeMax stores do not permit buying gift cards with gift cards.

Other ideas?

Do you have other ideas for maximizing points and savings when eating out at places like Panera, Chipotle, and Subway?  Comment below.

Through the Ultimate Rewards Mall, Chase Ink cardholders can earn 10 points per dollar at Buy.com this month (see “Ultimate Rewards Mall September Edition”).  On September 2nd, I launched an experiment: Could I buy gift cards at Buy.com and receive 10 points per dollar?

After logging into the Ultimate Rewards Mall with my Ink Bold account, I clicked through to Buy.com.

There, I searched for gift cards and found a few good ones such as Home Depot, Marriott, and OfficeMax.

Sadly, there were no high value cards such as gas cards, Target, or Walmart but each of the ones listed above are pretty good.  With Home Depot, you can double-dip (go through the mall a second time to buy items at Home Depot using your gift card) as long as part of the purchase is made with a credit card.  Marriott double-dipping should work too, but so far I’ve had little success doing so through the Ultimate Rewards Mall.  You might be better off booking your stay through a portal like FatWallet when planning to pay by gift card.  If you’re lucky enough to have a friendly OfficeMax nearby, there are lots of great opportunities to upgrade your gift card.  See “10% off everything and 7% off everything else.”

Buy.com adds a $2.99 shipping & handling charge for the first card you put in your basket, and 99 cents for each additional card.  So, if you plan to buy multiple cards, I’d recommend buying them all at once so as to minimize shipping and handling charges.

For this experiment, I bought a single $100 Marriott card which arrived in the mail about 5 days later.  It took 8 days for the transaction to show up as pending in the Ultimate Rewards Mall:

Note that the transaction above makes it look like the points posted on September 8, but in reality, they didn’t show up on my account until September 10.

No Super Points

Buy.com has its own loyalty program where you can earn “Super Points” for each qualifying purchase.  My account shows 0 super points earned from the gift card purchase.  I guess this means that gift cards are not qualifying purchases.

Other items of note

• As you can see from my screenshot above, Staples still gives points for software purchases despite the Terms & Conditions that say otherwise.
• In addition to this experiment, I launched a Bloomingdale’s double dip experiment the same day, but have yet to see any points.  I’ll wait another week before giving up on that one.
• I plan one more Buy.com experiment.  I will buy a Buy.com gift card to see if I get points, then I’ll use that gift card to buy a merchant gift card (e.g. Home Depot, Marriott, or OfficeMax) to see if I get points again.

Sears brings 10X to Freedom holders, but drops Ink and Sapphire to 4X.   

Every month, the Ultimate Rewards Mall has new month-long specials. Last month, I wrote about the August specials in the post ““Ultimate Rewards Mall August Edition.” Today, I’ll show you how things look for September.

As always, thanks goes to HikerT for updating his website that shows the Ultimate Rewards Mall payouts for different Chase cards. You can find his website here: lakebagger.com/ur/.

First the bad news

Here are some of the goodies from last month that went away:

• Sears dropped from 10X to 4X for Ink and Sapphire cardholders
• Staples dropped from 5X to 4X
• Office Depot dropped from 5X to 3X
• HSN dropped from 10X to 4X
• Shoebuy dropped from 15X to 10X
• JCPenney dropped from 10X to 6X
• Drugstore.com dropped from 10X to 8X

September Goodies

Now on to the good stuff!

Sears 10X (Freedom 10X. Ink & Sapphire 4X)
A couple of days ago I predicted that Sears would extend 10X through September.  I was hoping that would mean that I would get 10X from either my Sapphire Preferred or Ink Bold card.  However, Sears’ bonus earnings for both of those cards has dropped down to only 4X.  For Freedom cardholders, though, there’s great news: Sears now offers 10X bonus points if you log into the Ultimate Rewards Mall with your Freedom account!  For information about how to leverage this deal, see “Sears 10X: Leveraging the Deal.”  Also, please see “Sears 10X final days?” for additional information.

Sony 10X (Ink Bold 10X, Freedom & Sapphire 2X)
Note that past experiments have shown that it is possible to double-dip here to get a total of 20X, but you need to be very careful.  Buy only physical gift cards (not e-cards).  Then, when using the gift cards, make sure to avoid products excluded via the T&C:

Not eligible on Sony outlet, refurbished, clearance items, and Sony Ericsson locked phones, or Employee Purchase Programs. 

See “Sony 30X success” for more information.

Buy.com 10X (Ink 10X, Freedom & Sapphire 4X)
From an old Frequent Miler post, I found the following about buy.com:

A reader has reported success in getting 5 points per dollar by going through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to Buy.com to purchase merchant gift cards (Home Depot was his example).  They do charge a small shipping fee ($2.99 for the first card, $.99 for each subsequent card), but they also give you 1% back in the form of “Super Points” which can be used for future purchases.

For some reason, this info never made it into the Frequent Miler Laboratory (I probably simply forgot about it).  I plan to redo this experiment this month before putting it in.

Bloomingdale’s 10X (Sapphire 10X, Ink & Freedom 6X)
Time for a new double-dip experiment!

OfficeMax 5X (Ink 5X, Freedom & Sapphire 3X)
Note that in a previous Frequent Miler Laboratory experiment, buying OfficeMax gift cards through the mall did not result in points.

Home Depot 5X (Ink & Freedom 5X, Sapphire 3X)
In past experiments, buying gift cards from Home Depot did not result in points, but using gift cards did results in points as long as part of the payment was made with a credit card. See “Is the Home Depot double dip alive?” for details.

A few more:

• Macy’s 5X (Freedom 5X, Sapphire & Ink 3X)
• Ralph Lauren 5X (Sapphire 5X, Ink & Freedom 4X)
• Pottery Barn 5X (Sapphire 5X, Ink & Freedom 3X)
• Lord & Taylor 5X
• Dell Home 5X (Sapphire 5X, Ink & Freedom 2X)
• L.L. Bean 5X (Freedom 5X, Ink & Sapphire 2X)
• Tiger Direct 5X (Ink Bold 5X, Freedom & Sapphire 2X)
• KMart 4X
• Living Social 3X
• New Balance 3X

Predictions

Near the end of most months I write up a post with my predictions for how the mall will change.  I didn’t do so at the end of August other than to predict that Sears 10X might stay around longer (partial success!).  Sorry if you were expecting a more complete set of predictions!  I’ll plan to do the usual prediction posts at the end of each month going forward.

Until July 28 (Saturday), OfficeMax is offering a $50 hotel cash card when you make a purchase of $175 or more.

The cash card has some restrictions:

• Your hotel must be booked via www.redeemhotelcash.com (which probably means you won’t get elite stay credit or earn hotel points)
• Your stay must be two nights or more
• The card must be redeemed by January 1, 2014 (but it looks like your stay can be later than that as long as it is booked by that date – I’m not 100% sure).

Leveraging the Deal

Option 1: Buy gift cards through OfficeMax.com

• As I’ve reported before (see “10% off everything and 7% off everything else”), you can use an American Express business card to get 10% back from all OfficeMax orders greater than $250.  It appears that you can use this promo code “TRAVEL” when ordering gift cards.
• Assuming you buy $300 worth of gift cards, you will get $30 back from Amex OPEN Savings, and $50 back in the form of this hotel cash card.  Not bad.
• Use the gift cards for future OfficeMax purchases, or use them in-store to buy other gift cards (this has worked multiple times for me, but others have reported difficulty so try at your own risk).

Option 2: Buy OfficeMax stuff

• Go through TopCashBack to PlasticJungle to buy OfficeMax electronic gift cards for 11% off (and you should get additional cash back from TopCashBack).  Don’t buy physical gift cards because you won’t get them in time before this promotion ends.
• Go through ShopAtHome or TopCashBack to OfficeMax.com for up to 6% cash back.  Alternatively, go through the Ultimate Rewards Mall for 3 points per dollar.
• Add $175 worth of stuff to your cart, and then add promo code “TRAVEL”
• Use your electronic gift cards to make your purchase.  Try to make a small part of the purchase with a credit card – otherwise the cash back portals might not kick in.
• If you didn’t buy gift cards first, pay with an Ink Bold card (5X), or an American Express Simply Cash card (5% back + 5% or 10% back via OPEN Savings), or any Amex business card (5% back for purchases of $250 or less; 10% back for purchases greater than $250).
• Total potential savings: ~15% (TopCashBack + PlasticJungle) + 6% (ShopAtHome) + $50 (Hotel Card).  With a $175 purchase, that comes to about $86 in savings or almost 50%.

Is it worth it?

Certainly, if you plan to make OfficeMax purchases anyway.  I’ve never used one of these hotel cards, but it looks pretty useful.  I browsed to the redemption website and found that hotel prices were competitive and in some cases better than I’ve been able to find elsewhere.