Staples and Office Depot gift card promos, tracked and projected — including the weeks that haven't happened yet.
Confidence decays the further out the projection runs, and drops again across the December holiday window, where the cycle historically shifts by a week.
Each row is one promo stream. Each column is one Sunday-to-Saturday week. Filled = it ran. Dashed = projected. The four tracks interleave so that in almost any given week, exactly one of them is live.
The next four weeks are open to everyone. The full 12-month projection — plus a Thursday email the week before each promo starts — goes to subscribers.
One email a week at most, and one click to leave. We never sell or share your address.
The promo discount is only half the equation — activation fees are charged per card, while the Office Depot discount is per $300 of face value. Bigger denominations win.
The promo is only worth chasing if the card underneath it multiplies. One card dominates this category and nothing else is close.
| Card | Office supply | Cap | Annual fee | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chase Ink Business Cash | 5% / 5x UR | $25,000/yr combined w/ internet, cable, phone |
$0 | The whole reason this category exists. Cash back converts to transferable Ultimate Rewards only if you also hold a premium Chase card such as the Sapphire Reserve or Ink Preferred. |
| US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business | 3% | Uncapped | $0 | The best option once the Ink Cash $25k cap is exhausted — no ceiling. |
| BoA Business Advantage Cash Rewards | 3% | $50,000/yr | $0 | Office supply is a selectable category. Preferred Rewards status boosts the rate further. |
| Amex Business Gold | $20/mo credit | $240/yr enrollment required |
$375 | Earns 1x here — office supply isn't one of the six 4x categories. The value is the $20 monthly credit at FedEx, Grubhub and office supply stores, and there's a neat way to bank it: turn it into a gift card you'll actually use. |
| Amex Blue Business Plus | 2x MR | $50,000/yr | $0 | Not category-specific, but 2x transferable points on everything is a solid floor. |
| Amex Blue Business Cash | 2% | $50,000/yr | $0 | Same card, cash-back flavor. |
| Huntington Voice Business | 4% | $7,000/quarter | Varies | Office supplies is one of ten selectable categories. Niche, regional, but a strong rate. |
Compiled from Doctor of Credit and Frequent Miler coverage plus the comment threads, which are where the operational detail actually lives.
Almost always in-store only. Staples occasionally runs a parallel online deal on $200 virtual Visa eGift cards with a limit of 4, but that's the exception. Office Depot's $15-off promos have been consistently in-store.
Staples advertises 9 per customer per day; enforcement varies and some stores allow more, some less. Office Depot states 10 per household or business. Separately, Staples caps gift card purchases at $1,000 per transaction and $5,000 per day under federal anti-money-laundering rules.
Frequently no. Stock-outs are the single most common complaint in the comment threads — people arrive at opening and find the cards already gone. Go early in the week and early in the day.
In-store, usually yes — but it's cashier-dependent and varies by location. Staples says it accepts single or multiple payment methods, and Staples Canada caps it at five cards per purchase. Online, no — split payments aren't supported at all.
One hard rule: a gift card cannot be used to buy another gift card. So you can't chain them.
For the Amex Business Gold credit you don't need split payment anyway — just ring the small gift card up as its own separate transaction on the Amex.
Yes, paying by credit card is the entire point. Some stores do ask for ID verification when buying gift cards on a credit card. Bring it.
Functionally they behave the same: both are PIN-enabled and work like debit cards, which is what makes liquidation possible at all. Each retailer normally runs one network or the other in a given week, not both — the December holiday window is the exception.
Staples now sells variable-load cards in some stores, and whether the fee gets waived on those is store-dependent — reports go both ways. The fixed $200 cards are the reliable play.
Bluebird, Serve and Buxx are dead. Money orders are what's left.
Bank account shutdown from money order deposit volume. That's the real one, and it's a bank risk rather than a card-issuer risk — banks close accounts over repeated large money order deposits. Beyond that: some grocery stores won't sell money orders on gift cards at all, and there are isolated reports of cards arriving already registered to someone else, taking about a month to resolve.
Each stream carries a hit rate — the share of weeks it was due and actually ran — shown beside its name on the calendar. Confidence falls the further ahead a projection runs, and falls again across the December window, which is the one period the schedule reliably shifts.
This is a pattern model, not a promise. Retailers run these promos at their own discretion and can stop at any time.