I was targeted for a Bank of America BankAmeriDeal for Office Depot last month and I have been thinking “how can I maximize this deal”? The $15 max that you could get back was a limiting factor. What I didn’t know until a reader told me, Office Depot sells Forever stamps.
I’ve written a few times about creating 1 order per gift card so you receive enough stamps on Cardpool to generate your own free postage and get priority mail. On June 1, Cardpool now issues $.705 stamps because the bulk mail postage rates increased.
For me, I think it’s a waste to use 9 stamps to cover the $5.75 postage because you are over paying by $.595 and that could go towards your next batch of gift cards to mail out. I still recommend using 8 stamps as the new prepaid postage total would become $5.64 and you would need to pay $.11 out of pocket. When Cardpool issued $.69 stamps, I’ve stocked up on many $.20 and $.03 stamps to get the postage up to $5.75 for the flat rate envelope. At $.11, my stamps are not divisible with the denominations that I have. I now use 6 of the $.705 Cardpool stamps. This totals the postage to be $4.23 and I will use my stamps to pay the $1.52 difference. That’s a bigger difference than the original $.23 I used to pay and a lot of stamps I need to affix
The Deal
Office Depot sells Forever Stamps so I will buy 3 rolls of the 100 count stamps to maximize this offer.
I did a little digging around and found out that you can use the Forever stamp at today’s rates for up to 1 ounce. As of writing this, today’s rate of 1 Forever stamp is $.49 and you could use the Forever stamp as additional postage where required. Thus, my difference in of $1.52 I would do this: use 1 Forever stamps, 1 $.03 stamps, and 5 $.20 stamps. I will continue to do this until my stock of $.20 and $.03 stamps are used up.
I don’t mind paying for all these stamps because I know I will use them.
Unlike Staples rewards, OD/OM rewards can be used to buy postage stamps!
This is good to know!
Thanks for the info. Too bad BofA only offers 10% or less for their offers, with low maximums to boot. It’s really chincy if you are sync spoiled. C’mon BofA, throw down 20-30% offers which are standard for Amex. You don’t even have to offer 1/2 off like Amex did with Smart and Final or even 100% off like Amex did with Google play, Amazon, etc.
Then again BofA is trying albeit weakly. Don’t even get me started on Chase. It’s like hearing crickets over there. Only thing I get are the … we’ll give you points if you use the portal to buy stuff on-line, yawn.
There’s pros and cons to the deals, I like how once you sign up, any of the cards that are eligible you can use, don’t have to think about which card. But you’re right, the offers are extremely low and one time use. On the plus side, you get all the points for the full charge. For instance, $200 spend you get 200 points, unlike AMEX where it could be spend $200 get $50 back and you only get 150 points.
I’d love it if Chase had offers like this, that would be pretty awesome
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
why not just buy a $200 VGC w/INK and call it a day?
Because BofA doesn’t issue Ink cards and this blog post was about BofA not about how business members of Chase can maximize UR points.