Thunderroad

I'm sure the answers are in this forum somewhere. I've searched "Ink Business Plus" but only came up with one old thread with that title, so...

I currently have the old Ink Business Plus card and use it for the 5X value it offers for internet and cell phone bills. I'd appreciate some help on some related questions:

1. Sorry if this is a really basic question, but I haven't bought or used gift cards before: I want to start using the Ink Business Plus for my fairly frequent Amazon purchases, by buying gift cards at office supply stores (for the 5X points value) to use at the Amazon site. But a couple of Staples and Office Depot office supply stores near me don't have Amazon gift cards. Can I use regular Visa gift cards at Amazon, or must they be Amazon gift cards?
2. For non-Amazon sites, do regular Visa gift cards (which again, I'd purchase at office supply stores for the 5X) generally work for purchases?
3. Am I correct in assuming that I can downgrade to the Ink Business Cash card and still get the 5X value for internet, phone, office supply stores, etc., but avoid paying the annual fee?
4. Any reason to keep the Ink Business Plus as opposed to downgrading to the Ink Business Cash?

Thanks for any help.

mia

While you can buy Amex/MasterCard/VISA gift cards at office supply stores, you typically cannot buy them at face value, and the fees will erode the value of the points earned. Look carefully for Amazon gift cards, they may be branded "Kindle" or similar.

Extensive discussion here:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/manu...2018-19-a.html

VGC's and AGC's from Office Depot

You can downgrade INK Plus to INK Cash, but the annual cap on 5X earnings is lower -and- you will be unable to transfer points from INK Cash to airline or hotel partners, unless you also hold a fee-paid card such as Sapphire Reserve, Sapphire Preferred, or INK Preferred.

Thunderroad

Ok. Still a bit confused about a would-be deal that's more complicated than I'd assumed. But thanks very much for this info.

bbriscoe34

If you want the cash and are under 5/24 why not just do a new app? There is a $500 welcome bonus if you do a new app instead of the downgrade.

Thunderroad

Thanks, but I'm over 5/24 and was seeing this as a potentially easy way of leveraging my roughly $4,000/year spend on Amazon into 20K Chase points. I guess it's not as simple as that.

mia

It is simple if you find an office supply store that sells Amazon gift cards. Our Staples sells them.

HPN-HRL

Are you certain that the office supply stores near you never have any Amazon/Kindle GCs? One of those stores near me runs out every now and again, but they always come back within a month or two.

beachfan

I'm a little confused as to what's confusing you but assuming it's the downgrade question

If you have another Chase product (such as Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Sapphire Reserve) that let's you transfer UR points to airlines, then Ink Cash for the 5x bonus is great.

If you don't have that other product, then the downgrade isn't great, as you can't transfer to other travel programs just with Ink Cash. You need to first move them to your other (transferable) UR account, and then transfer.

The other downsides are loss of benefits in the more expensive Ink Products (which you pay for with an annual fee).

I have the CSP and Ink Cash and it's great. All my Amazon purchase get's 5x.

LUVs_2_Fly

KEEP THE PLUS. I cant not stress this enough.
I had the plus and then downgraded to the cash to avoid paying the AF. That is about to to become a regrettable decision for me. As I got further into the points game, my 5x spending on the CIC has only gone up. I am on track to just about hit the 25k limit this year on my CIC. Next year, I may be way over that, and wont be getting 5x anymore, but I would be with the plus.

Here's my simple non MS usage for CIC 5x.
-----------------
My Comcast and Verizon Cell bills hit my CIC along with my fathers via auto Pay. (he used to pay by check, so now just pays me).

Buy Amazon GCs at Staples, usually 500$ at a time and immediately load into my amazon account. They used to have 500 and 200$ cards, but now all I get is 100s, So I buy handfuls.

Whenever Staples does a no fee 200$ visa gift cards, I buy 1000-2000$ worth. This deal comes around fairly often. I unload these on my Costco shopping trips, but people could also use them for everyday spend, that too much hassle for me considering returns and such, but costco is safe and easy and will refund any visa or issue you a cash card. I also uses these Visas to pay my Power, Water, Gas bills. Be weary of fees here. My power company changes $1.75 per payment, so I just unload 200$ increments no matter what my bill is. thats .875% lost to fees, pretty small. My power and water co charge 2.3% which sucks. So I begrudgingly use walmart bill pay to pay these bills with 1.5 or 2$ fee. so 1% max. fees again (and purchased with no fee), these are done in 200$ increments. Most of the time these 200$ visas say limit 1, but they stores don't know or don't care. I've only ever been told one once. But there is a 2000$ limit per day on all GCs so be aware of that.

If you plan on working the system and could possibly ever spend over 25k a year on these 5x items, Keep the Plus. because if you cancel/downgrade, you will never be able to get it back.

pallhedge

Or you can position yourself with more than one free Ink Cash card the same way many have more than one Freedom card.

dkerr

I find the 5x points at Staples for Amazon gift cards really valuable, and I do it a lot. But just a caution for people when doing this that you might want to avoid making large purchases with Amazon gift card (or Visa gift cards) if that purchase is something that you might need one of your credit card benefits with. For example, purchase protection, extended warranty, etc. If you buy say a $1000 laptop would you rather the 5x points or the extended warranty, etc. Note that you could go through a cash-back portal to maximize your points earning to minimize the lost of points (e.g. chase freedom shopping portal has 4 points per dollar spent at Dell and 2 points per dollar spent at Apple, in addition to the 1.5 point on the card).

DAK.

LUVs_2_Fly

Just made this decision myself. Bought a generator on amazon, and used CSR over Amazon GC purchased with CIC. Only did it for the extended warranty that I hope I dont have to use.