Staples Success with Free Money!

Last week I posted about a few ways to get some free money at Staples. This included doing three things:

1. Syncing your Amex card with the “Spend $75, get $25 statement credit promo” (blog post here)
2. Purchase $300 MasterCard Gift Cards and get a $20 Staples gift card after rebate promo (blog post here)
3. Registering a credit card with Plink as they are now a partner with Staples (blog post here)

Well I just took advantage of the above three offers/promo in one single transaction and had great success! I learned some tips along the way that I’d like to share as well.

First to quickly recap on how to maximize on the deal:

• Sync your American Express card with the $25 statement credit after spending $75 offer (you must have an American Express, sync you card, and have the offer appear in your account)
• Sync either your American Express or Chase Ink Bold/Plus card with Plink (you can read more about Plink and their partnership with Staples here)
• Purchase a $200 and $100 MasterCard gift card) – this will cost you $312.90
• Pay for your single transaction using two different credit cards – put $75 on your synced Amex card and the remaining amount of $237.90 on your Chase Ink Bold or Chase Ink Plus credit card.

I ended up with… $300 in MasterCard cards (which I will then cash out via Amazon payments) + $20 Staples gift card + $25 statement credit + $3 in Plink points = $345

And I spent…. $312.90

So ultimately I walked away with… $25 Amex credit, $20 Staples gift card, $3 in Plink points, 1,190 Ultimate Reward points (valued at $24ish), 75 SPG points (valued at about $2, but the 75 points will be towards whatever Amex card you use, I personally just used my SPG). All in all, I value the total profit to be around $60.

Some tips for the deal:

• The MasterCard gift cards totaling $300 MUST be part of the same purchase/transaction – making two separate transactions will NOT trigger the rebate
• Staples CAN split a transaction using two different credit cards – if the cashier is not sure how to do that, ask for a manager to do it for you
• To earn more free money (well really UR points), you can instead purchase two $200 MasterCard gift cards – this will give you 500 more Ultimate Reward points and only cost you an extra $1 (I did not do this as there was only one $200 MasterCard gift card left on the rack)
• You should receive an email from American Express within minutes after your purchase with the subject line stating “Thanks for using your enrolled card”
• You will need to fill out the Staples rebate form online to earn the $20 Staples gift card

Many people have tweeted, commented, emailed asking if you could only get the $25 statement credit once. The quick answer is for the most part yes. Unfortunately, American Express has updated their technology and if you were targeted for this promotion on more than one card, upon registering and linking one card, the promotion vanishes from the other cards. However, the work around for this is to create multiple American Express login accounts. If each card is registered with a different account (meaning different username/password) then you will be able to sync multiple cards. If you have the patience for this, then you can go ahead and earn multiple $25 statement credits (although still only one per card).

Not too bad for 10 minutes spent at Staples!