The other week, I attempted to purchase gift cards at Office Max using my American Express Starwood Preferred Guest card with OPEN savings. I had made an error and checked out $200 and received 5% instead of 10% (for purchases over $250, you’d receive 10%).
Another mistake I made was making too many orders too frequently, Office Max’s systems registered this, and did not fulfill. When I called Office Max to rectify the situation, I wound up speaking to someone on their credit analysis team. She explained to me that there is now a limit of 5 SKUs per customer and explicitly told me that there are people buying thousands of dollars worth of gift cards and using their American Express card because of some sort of special. Before releasing my order, she went through all of my orders and asked me if the gift cards were for personal use. My plans, of course, were to resell the cards.
Today, I checked Office Max and it seems they pulled the two of the three gift cards that I were buying from them: Home Depot and Nordstrom.
It’s truly a shame because I just registered for the SPG card and would have loved to have participated more with Office Max in gift card churning. At this time, when I try to repurchase a previous order, the website says the gift cards are temporarily out of stock.
