Until July 28 (Saturday), OfficeMax is offering a $50 hotel cash card when you make a purchase of $175 or more.
The cash card has some restrictions:
- Your hotel must be booked via www.redeemhotelcash.com (which probably means you won’t get elite stay credit or earn hotel points)
- Your stay must be two nights or more
- The card must be redeemed by January 1, 2014 (but it looks like your stay can be later than that as long as it is booked by that date – I’m not 100% sure).
Leveraging the Deal
Option 1: Buy gift cards through OfficeMax.com
- As I’ve reported before (see “10% off everything and 7% off everything else”), you can use an American Express business card to get 10% back from all OfficeMax orders greater than $250. It appears that you can use this promo code “TRAVEL” when ordering gift cards.
- Assuming you buy $300 worth of gift cards, you will get $30 back from Amex OPEN Savings, and $50 back in the form of this hotel cash card. Not bad.
- Use the gift cards for future OfficeMax purchases, or use them in-store to buy other gift cards (this has worked multiple times for me, but others have reported difficulty so try at your own risk).
Option 2: Buy OfficeMax stuff
- Go through TopCashBack to PlasticJungle to buy OfficeMax electronic gift cards for 11% off (and you should get additional cash back from TopCashBack). Don’t buy physical gift cards because you won’t get them in time before this promotion ends.
- Go through ShopAtHome or TopCashBack to OfficeMax.com for up to 6% cash back. Alternatively, go through the Ultimate Rewards Mall for 3 points per dollar.
- Add $175 worth of stuff to your cart, and then add promo code “TRAVEL”
- Use your electronic gift cards to make your purchase. Try to make a small part of the purchase with a credit card – otherwise the cash back portals might not kick in.
- If you didn’t buy gift cards first, pay with an Ink Bold card (5X), or an American Express Simply Cash card (5% back + 5% or 10% back via OPEN Savings), or any Amex business card (5% back for purchases of $250 or less; 10% back for purchases greater than $250).
- Total potential savings: ~15% (TopCashBack + PlasticJungle) + 6% (ShopAtHome) + $50 (Hotel Card). With a $175 purchase, that comes to about $86 in savings or almost 50%.
Is it worth it?
Certainly, if you plan to make OfficeMax purchases anyway. I’ve never used one of these hotel cards, but it looks pretty useful. I browsed to the redemption website and found that hotel prices were competitive and in some cases better than I’ve been able to find elsewhere.