The offer is back at Staples for the week of October 2-8 in 2016 at their brick and mortar stores. Buy $300+ of Mastercard gift cards, and receive a $15 Staples Gift Card via Easy Rebate (in about 4-6 weeks). You can submit the rebate online, you don’t have to mail anything in. All you need is your cash register receipt (online or printed, as long as it has the offer ID and the transaction ID which are needed to process the online rebate).

The strategy is the same whether they offer a $20 or $15 gift card back. You need to get to the $300 amount with two or one gift cards. Since $300+ gift cards are unicorns (for the most part), you’d have to get there with two of them, eg $200 and $100. The activation fees make it very close, $7 for the $200 and $6 for the $100, so you are squeezing a $2 profit on a $300 investment. It’s a 0.64% return on investment with a one-month vesting period, so it beats checking and savings accounts 🙂

This becomes a better deal if you have a credit card that gives you cashback rewards on office supplies that are higher than your everyday purchases. So for example if you have the Chase Ink that gets you 5% on office supplies, you can buy the Mastercards with these offer, and then use them to purchase items that get you 1% cashback rewards. So just like that, you earned $12 in cashback rewards with this offer (4% of $300), in addition to the $2 “profit” 🙂

If you are a fan of the Staples Gift Card offers, good news for you! Per the teaser of their Weekly Ad for the week of Sunday July 17 until the close of business on Saturday 23, 2016, at their brick and mortar stores, it is the return of the Mastercard Prepaid Gift Card offer. It’s similar style, buy $300+ in prepaid Mastercard gift cards, and receive a $15 Staples Gift Card via Easy Rebate. Easy Rebate means you can submit the offer online, you don’t have to mail or photocopy anything, you just need the numbers from your receipt.

The usual strategy applies here, if you can get to $300 with two or one gift card, then this is a money maker deal worth doing. The activation fee of a $200 gift card is $7, while a $100 has a $6 activation fee. So with this combination, you make a $2 profit on a $300 investment. Not as sexy as back when the Easy Rebate was $20.

Now if you can find a single $300+ gift card, then that would be awesome, but those are about as rare as unicorns 🙁

This is another cyclical promotion that returns every few weeks. Keep checking their Weekly Ad to see when it comes back again. Keep in mind these have their dedicated fans, so your best bet is to get there as early on Sunday as possible…

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If you like the guaranteed return of investment of the Staples gift card promotions, they are coming back during the April 19-25 (2015) shopping week at Staples brick and mortar stores. You purchase $300 or more in Mastercard Gift Card and you can receive a $20 Staples Gift Card via Easy Rebate (rebate submitted online, no need to be mailing things).

The Mastercards have a mandatory activation fee, so in order for this to be profitable, you need to get to $300 with two gift cards (eg $200 + $100). If you need three gift cards to get to $300, the activation fee is too close to the $20 gift card bonus, washing the deal.