DEAD DEAL! A time when Staples paid out portal points for VGC

Introduction

Many moons ago, April 28, 2014 to be exact, when information was free flowing on blogs, Staples introduced the $200 VGC on their site (hey look who the 2nd commenter is.)  It didn’t take a genius to try buying the VGC through a portal and you know what, it worked.  You could get 5X Ink PLUS portals that were paying out 5% or greater.  Ah it was a glorious time.

 

2 weeks later

Fast forward 2 weeks on May 12, 2014, Staples ended the portal payout real fast.  I think everyone pretty much stopped there.  However…

 

Staples did pay out…if you tricked it

While this was never blogged about, it was talked about in all the hidden forums, and it seemed like “if you knew a guy who knows a guy,” then you knew about it too.  I don’t know exactly when someone figured it out and shared the trick, but the sooner you knew about it, the fatter you got.  I myself didn’t learn about it until late 2014.  I’m not going to spell out the trick (for the slight chance it’ll come back,) but the last order in the screenshot should help you.  Don’t email me.  Use math.

 

Then it died again

As word spread about the trick, more and more orders flowed in.  However, there was a general consensus to not hit this too hard for fear of getting it killed (plus, you had Ink bandwidth constraints remember?)  Therefore, people would only wait until there was a 2X or 4X portal rate before they banged on it.  This was going great until April 20, 2015.  I know that date because I placed 5 orders on 4/20 and 4/21.  What happened on 4/20 and 4/21?  Well this happened:

Out of my 5 orders in those 2 days, only 1 order tracked and the reason it tracked was it was under $1000.  The other 4 orders were max orders and never tracked.  What I believe happened was that EVERYONE who knew about the deal just flooded Staples with orders.  I mean, this was AS 8X.  So when it was time for Staples to pay out, they noticed the surge and thought, “Hmmm, let’s figure out what people are buying.”  And that’s when it died.  Of course people tried other portals out there, but none worked.  It was game over.  Clearly, the hogs were to blame for this death (or more like the pigs who saw 8X and became a hog on that day.)  As you can see, this deal lasted for nearly a year due to no blog exposure.

 

The zombie deal

When the $300 VGC popped up on their site, of course everyone and their grandmas tried the trick.  I think that worked for a day or two before Staples wised up and re-coded the VGC to not pay out.

 

Lessons Learned

The lesson learned here is 1) these deals won’t ever be publicly talked about so you’ll have to network and “know a guy who knows a guy” to get you into the secret forums or 2) the much easier route is to just try it for yourself, just like Jack did yesterday.  The point is – think out of the box.  Try obscure portals.  If it doesn’t work, you didn’t lose out on anything.  I heard a guy found an obscure portal that paid out on the Target merry-go-round.  Now I’m kicking myself for not trying it out myself!

 

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