$500 Visa Gift Cards are on Life Support (Cash Only Starting Monday)
I am assuming everyone has read $500 Visa Gift Cards are Back at Office Depot! Unfortunately, I am about to burst your bubble.
This afternoon, at 2PM PST, I returned to the scene of the crime: Office Depot at The District (Tustin, CA) aka the Office Depot between the Palm Trees.
I went straight to the gift card rack and looked for the $500 Vanilla Visa Gift Cards. Last night (Tuesday, July 3) at 5PM PST, I saw at least 20 $500 Vanilla Visa Gift Cards that looked like this.
As you can tell from the picture below, they had all been pulled from the rack.
After standing next to the gift card rack for a few minutes, the manager came to me asking if I was looking for the $500 Gift Cards. I don’t know about your local Office Depot store, but the manager and the cashier working here are some of the nicest people I have ever met (you know who you are). We talked for a few minutes and here is what she told me:
- The $500 Vanilla Visa Gift Cards were pulled from the rack this morning before they opened (sorry to those who drove all the way to the store).
- When I purchased 1 gift card last night, I got lucky. The registers were not coded properly.
- Starting Monday, July 8, there will be a new display for the $500 Vanilla Visa Gift Cards.
- Starting Monday, all $500 gift cards (maybe even $200 gift cards) will require cash. Cash Only! No Debit Cards! No Credit Cards! No Chase Ink Business Credit Cards! No unlimited supply of Chase Ultimate Reward Points
- The cash only will be hard coded into the system and there will be no way to override the system to accept credit cards. This confirms what the manager at Frequent Miler’s Office Depot told him.
As we know with CVS Stores, each store is run a little differently, so your store might still accept credit cards for the $500 gift cards. At this point in the cat and mouse game, it looks like the cat has the upper hand because the mice do not earn points on cash transactions (yet).
As I walked back to my car, my Chase Ink Bold Business Credit Card was sad to leave and waived good bye to his BFF (Office Depot). Would they ever see each other again? Only time will tell…
Have you been able to find these at your local Office Depot store? What did the manager/cashier tell you? Leave a comment below.
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Nice work!
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July 6 saturday in Las Vegas, Office depot could not ring up the prepaid visa card on their register when I wanted to pay with my chase ink. Second office depot outright and said I have to pay cash or debit card for the prepaid visa card……
That’s frustrating to hear. The rumor is that OD will start taking cash only for Vanilla Gift Cards. It sounds like Las Vegas is going to be cash only.
They complain about money laundering yet they only accept cash? What am I missing here?
We just have to wait a few weeks for the money launderers to buy the cards then OD will switch to credit cards only with IDs.
Pingback: Many flavors of Vanilla return to Office Depot. Does it matter? (update 1) - The Frequent Miler
Any update for us Grant?
I’m in Vancouver today, so no Office Depot visits for me today. Check out FM’s post from this morning: http://boardingarea.com/frequentmiler/2013/07/08/many-flavors-of-vanilla-return-to-office-depot-does-it-matter/
I just called an OD in denver, co. hoping to pick up 20 or so…employee said that they had the $500 cards but were not out for purchase yet and he didn’t know why (guessing they took them down for the hard code). Also said that they would be cash only.
If you are close to the store, you can try to buy 1 card. If that goes through, you can try to get more.
Pingback: $500 gift cards return to Office Depot today - The Frequent Miler
Darn! I was in Thailand when all this happened! I was planning to go to OD at The District tomorrow on my way to Hawaii and buy some $500 VGCs – until I read this…Are they selling any of the VGCs with credit cards? Even the 100’s or the 50’s?
I was in Canada for the past 2 weeks so I haven’t been back to the OD yet. Staples has a promo right now on $200 MC Gift Cards. I would go there and use an Ink card.