Stoughton

Reasons are irrelevant - the information is just as easily found here as it is on a blog. At least MMS admits to the fact that he's dumping details whereas a good portion of the people posting here simply complain about it while doing the same in the next breath.

shoreline

This is very much ymmv.

You will need to experiment in your own area to find out for sure.

What works at some locations may not at another. Many things seem to be regional while some seem to be corporate policy.

leftpinky

Just came back from OD...lady asked about why I didnt have gift cards...said no more $500...then she said, oh, they might come out with a new design. I asked her why she thought that...and she said bc there are empty shelves....eh, I don't expect any new $500 ones.

For those people above who said chase didn't have anything to do with it, I would think you might be wrong because Chase has a lot of leverage with OD due to the 5x . Chase could always eliminate OD as a 5x transfer partern. but regardless, it is probably an issue on both Chase and OD's end...

Ducati

I just came from an OD that had GCs yesterday. Today, they're all gone and replaced with the $200 variety. I thought this particular OD didn't get the memo since they had them yesterday. I asked the European manager about it. He said, "We stopped selling them." I asked why. He replied, "I don't know," and just walked away. So much for customer service. He must hate the 5X crowd.

Ducati

Why would a credit card company have any leverage with OD? Chase would not discriminately remove OD from their 5X office supply program. Chase would just drop the entire program. Do you think 5X is only from OD? There are many cardholders that spend thousands in a month on actual office supplies from retailers other than OD.

crimsonAA

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LAX88

In my opinion, 6x Hilton is worth about as much as 1x SPG. If I'm to risk being on AMEX's radar, I won't be doing it for any amount of HHonors points.

ddallas

AMEX Blue Cash Prefered 6% cash back on first $6000 of spend in grocery store.

leftpinky

AMEX is doing this with drug stores: they're limting it to a select few, so not unprecedented. Say there are 10,000 people doing the 5x with gift cards. Say on avergae they're doing $10k per year (some are doing 150k, others much less). That's $100M in extra charges, Chase pays out 5% but only gets back about 2.5% (max, OD, etc probably have better deals). You're looking at $2.5M in losses. Throw in bluebird, maybe 20k customers? May at $20k per year? and you're looking at a big chunk of change for a rewards program that is worth maybe a billion dollars. 1-3% increase in costs just for OD? probably not worth keep OD around as a 5x partner if they're screwing over UR, exp since Chase cancelled people's Shappire cards for MUCH less abuse

j9jm3

I visited 6 Office Depots in Houston area. All variable cards up to $500 were gone. Really sucks.

jcmitchell21

Limiting what? They are removing drugstores altogether from the 6x bonus.

The idea that Chase has some sort of leverage over OD with the 5x bonus is laughable to me. It's a different company, that answer to different shareholders, etc. OD made it for awhile without any connection to 5x from Chase. Why would they care about it now over a product that may/may not make them any money? Besides what we do, I imagine the additional traffic that is driven to OD because of the 5x bonus is extremely minimal compared to their overall revenue.

leftpinky

Let me guess, you're just guessing re: chase/OD relationship, right? Chase didn't all of a sudden do a 5x for office products without talking to their partners, which in this case would have been OD/Office max, staples. They monitor these things pretty closely and work with their partners to construct these promos in a way to make both profitable. I've worked and reviewed many of these types of deals and they're not put together indiscriminately.

Happy

On the HHonor literature, the drug stores are NAMED, they are not just generic drug stores, they are specifically names as purchases at those named drug stores will earn 6x.

May be someone can report if his/her purchases at an independent drug store (there are still some particularly in the NE region) earns the 6x or not. My guess is not.

Based on the treatment on grocery stores I have a feeling that AMEX does arbitrarily classify who qualify who do not. A fairly popular local grocery chain is classified by Visa as supermarket but it never earns 6x with AMEX HHonor. AMEX kept telling me the merchant does not classify itself as Supermarket... Yeah right. Why would it be shown as Supermarket in Visa's merchant category but not in AMEX?

Stoughton

OD is not a "5x partner". It sells office supplies, just like any number of other retailers. The idea that Chase has that kind of pull is laughable at best.

leftpinky

A company worth $200B having influence over a company nearing bankruptcy and trying to do whatever it ca to survive? Yeah, laughable