Years ago, I used to get free samples all the time. You input your whole life story and in exchange, the company sends you a free sample. While that’s all good and fine, it seemed like to me, I either never used the samples or I liked them and ended up having to buy a full size product.
So, it became clear to me…why not just get the full size products of the brands I use for free in the beginning. This would save me time and give me more privacy with filling out those forms for free samples.
So began my quest…
A challenge I’ve become very good at over the years. The trick to living the good life on less is not spending money on things most people buy. I get a lot of my products for free! You can see my article on how I get all my household goods and children’s supplies for free (without using coupons) as well by clicking here.
Staples is definitely no exception on the free boat, but it’s not JUST about getting items for free. It’s also about quality, my main objective in saving money.
In addition to having great prices, good sales, quality merchandise, a fantastic ink program, did I mention Staples free stuff (?!), the stores are also clean, the checkers are friendly and it’s always an overall great experience. They never hassle with returns, even when it’s past the date. This tells me they care more about their customers than money, making them one of my top 5 brands I love the most!
Get Items You Use Everyday for FREE at Staples
Step 1: Start Saving All Your Empty Ink Cartridges for Staples Ink Recycling Program
One of Staples offers is they pay you $2 per cartridge, limit 10 per month. You can sign up online to get your rewards emailed to you (faster than snail mail). Print them out and use them in the store or online.
So, if you’re using ink at your place of employment and its okay with your boss, don’t throw away the empty cartridges. Save what you use at home. You can even ask friends to save your ink cartridges for you as well.
It’s great to recycle, even more so, when your PAID to do it. So, every month, I get my $20 that I get to spend in the store on ANYTHING I want. Add $240/year to my resume of creating resources while being able to stay at home!
When your turning in your ink cartridges, you can go to any checkout lane and turn them in. They will ask for your reward card. This is most important.
Step 2: Sign Up for a Staples Rewards Card
You will want to have a rewards card to keep track of all your purchases and earn your money (if you ever need to do a return and don’t have your receipt, the rewards card will help!). Sign up here.
When your creating your online account (either through your first order on their site or the rewards card), there’s a check box your going to want to select. It’ll say something like, receive promotional emails, blah, blah. Make sure to select that.
Step 3: Sign Up for Staples Promotional Emails
You most certainly want those emails. On occasion they send out things that are not relevant to me, but overall, the good far outweighs the bad. WHY? Because in those emails you, and you alone, will have access to all the BEST coupons.
This is where it gets interesting!
I’ve been doing this for a few years now and I can pretty much time it. Every 2 months on average, they will send you out a FABULOUS coupon. It may be $5 off $10 purchase, $10 off $25. Those are awesome coupons and guess what, you CAN use them in the same purchase as your rewards for turning in the ink.
Step 4: Use Coupons and Then Stack Them
Using 2 or more coupons in the same purchase is called stacking coupons.
Lets say, for example, you want to purchase two new ink cartridges. The new ink cartridge costs $23.99 each ($47.98 total). You have a $20 off $50 coupon and your rewards for $20. You will want to add something small to your basket to get your total to the $50 thresh hold. Maybe its a pack of paper, $3.99.
So, your new total is $51.97. You hand over your rewards card, they scan it, next give them your coupons, one at a time. They scan your $20 off $50. Your total is down to $31.97. They scan your $20 rewards check and your down to $11.97. $12 for $52 in items. That’s a savings of 77% off retail! But wait, it gets totally better!
Step 5: Use Staples Rebates
Every week or two, Staples has products FAR (free after rebate), which are essentially like free gifts from Staples. The only trick is that you have to make 100% sure the product your buying is the product in the ad. If you’re not sure, ask. The employees are always more than happy to oblige. So, this is how I get my printer paper free. I NEVER pay for printer paper. In fact, at the moment I write this, I have TWO FULL cases of paper in the garage! They give out paper a LOT. Every time they do, you can score 2 of them. So, lets use another scenario.
You want to buy 1 ink cartridge. They are $19.99. You also want to purchase some paper towels. Their regular price is, by far, cheaper than anywhere else, even Walmart (yes I said it, Walmart is rarely cheaper than other places, but I’ll tell you about that later 🙂 ). But this week that I write this, Staples has their Bounty Basic paper towels on SALE for $6.99 for 12 rolls!!!!! That’s like 58 cents a roll!
This week, you also have a $10 off $20 break room supplies coupon! So, you can buy two paper towel packages and something else inexpensive to meet that thresh-hold or 3 paper towel packages and stock up for the whole year! I like to use Mr. Clean Magic Erasers. Those are part of the break room supplies.
If you want to go online to play around with some things and see your total before going to the store, that’s a great idea. I actually order everything online and they bring it to my door because once you hit a certain amount in spending on your rewards card, they start bumping you up levels. Each level is increased perks!
Throw in your two FAR printer paper packs (regular price $5.99). You also have your rewards check for $20.
So, before coupons, your total looks like this: $19.99+$6.99+$6.99 +$6.99 +$5.99 + $5.99= $52.94. Use your $10 off $20 break room coupon and use your rewards check of $20 and your new total is: $22.94 and as soon as you go home and enter the info online for the FAR printer paper, your new total is: $10.96 for 1 ink, 2 papers, and 3-12 packs of paper towel. I don’t know where else you can go and get all that for $11!
Now, it gets better.
Yes, it REALLY does! This is why I love Staples so much!
Step 6: Add Up Your Savings
Every single purchase you make, you earn a % back on. At this time, its 5%. So, you paid $52.94 and they do minus out the break room coupon you used in the previous example, so $42.94. They will go by THAT amount. They don’t count your FAR, they don’t count your rewards checks! So, you just made $2.14 on that purchase in rewards to be added to your next rewards. So, you brought your total down THIS time from $10.96 to $8.82 for 2 printer paper packs, 1 ink, and 3-12 paper towel packs. $9!
By now, you should know what I’m going to say….it gets better! I kid you not!
Step 7: Always Use Double Rewards on Ink
I bet you’re wondering when you turn in your ink. Every 2-3 months, Staples does a promotion where they give you DOUBLE the rewards back when you turn in ink and purchase $50 in ink. So, I go to the store, and yes, I stack EVERYTHING from the previous example (so not typing that all out again! lol).
You simply add $30.01 more in ink and turn in your old empty cartridges at the same time (in the SAME transaction!!) You are earning $4 per ink cartridge instead of $2. Limit 5 usually. So, I turn in my 10 cartridges and I have $30 now instead of $20 rewards coming back to me!
Can it possibly get any better? YES! Yes, it can!
On top of all of that, I also have a $20 off $50 printer ink coupon. Again, they all can stack as long as I meet those thresh holds.
Can you see now the possibilities of walking out of the store with bags of free stuff and the cops NOT being called on you! I’ve been doing this for about 2 years now and I’ve never had any problems.
Step 8: Use Coupon Sites
A while back, there was a promotion going on Recycle Bank where I cashed in 300 points for a $25 off $50 Staples coupon! I cashed out quite a few of those coupons! It’s really easy to earn points with them too! Click here to check them out. They always have great coupons that I like to use. I just cashed one out for Bed, Bath, and Beyond. $5 off $10 purchase!
Step 9: Use Rewards Sites
On your Staples online purchases, simply go to Ebates FIRST and click-through to earn 2% off your total purchase at Staples. As you can see, your earnings can add up. Your $8.82 total easily becomes $0.00 when you’re applying all these methods! I’m not just talking chump change with Ebates either. My Ebates account currently has $1,943.33 in it.
It adds up fast! In addition to that cash back, I use my Paypal debit card and I get cash back on that card as well. I get the savings coming, going, and everywhere in between and you can too if you spend smart!!!!
Checklist to saving the most money at Staples:
- Save your empty ink cartridges
- Sign up for a Staples Rewards Card
- Get on Staples email list
- Sign up at Recycle Bank
- Join Ebates (get a $10 free gift card when you join!)
- Sign up for a Paypal debit card
Sarah says
Thank you for sharing this. I just signed up. Perfect timing. I’m out of ink. 🙂
Sarah says
@Sarah, that is great. To score a great deal, you might have to plan a little bit out farther. To save the most, you want to combine their coupons. That sweet spot usually hits once per month. Then stock up as best you can during each time. 🙂
Kirsten says
Wow, do I ever wish that Staples in Canada had these programs!! Lucky you! 🙂
Sarah says
Sorry you don’t have the programs there Kirsten. Do you know anyone in the USA who can order online and deliver it to a USA address? I know they even have mail forwarding services out there, where you ship to USA and it ships to you outside of the US. Canada is not that far from the US border. States like Washington, Idaho, North Dakota, Montana are all right there. Not sure that is worth it for you, but certainly worth looking into. 🙂 If you don’t have a particular store there, just try to find the absolute best prices you can where you are at. I know when I lived in a particular part of Oregon, there were not any stores there that were cheap, but I found the cheapest stores in that area and shopped there first before the regular stores. Whatever you can do, it’s still saving money. 🙂 DO you have a Target there? That’s probably the second cheapest store for office/school supplies.
Connie says
I have a stash of ink cartridges from home and work but haven’t recycled since they started requiring a certain amount of ink purchase in a certain time frame (can’t recall specifics at moment). However, your article is great and I am going to try and make some of these deals happen! Thanks.
Sarah says
Yes, they changed it where you have to spend at least $30 in ink within 6 months. It’s a really, really low threshold. They had to do that because a lot of people were abusing the system, so instead of canceling the promotion, they do that. $30 in ink in 6 months is not a big deal for me. I buy all my ink there anyway because with coupons and that program, I get it pretty close to free anyway. 🙂 Office Depot also has a similar program. Not sure if there’s a theshold with them or not.
Dawn says
Am I reading correctly that you can use all these rebates and coupons online as well? I live an hour away from the closest Staples, but would love to take advantage of this!
Sarah says
Most of the time you can, yes. 🙂 If there is an online code, you can stack the coupons. When you get the emails from them, just look for that online code. Sometimes it’s in the small print, but if it’s there, it’ll stack. I get free shipping, so this is often how I order myself.
Teresa says
Do you send your printer cartridges through the mail?
Sarah says
No, I take them in, but I’ve heard they have a mail-in program now, which is pretty cool. Have you tried it?
Lena says
Sarah – This is AWESOME! Sharing this with my local moms coupon group! 🙂
Rebecca says
You are so Funny! You sound like an infomercial…..Now, it gets better.
Yes, it REALLY does!…lol…I love it! Great post Sarah! I will have to look into Staples.
Sarah Titus says
Haha! Well, I do love Staples. 🙂 Just call me a walking infomercial. I might be a little obsessed with them. LOL. Definitely in the top 5 brands I love category.
Maki says
Unfotunately, in Canada coupon stacking is not allowed in stores, in my personal experience. It’s frustrating as the brand name stores are the same, but the policies are vastly different; add to that the difficulty of trying to discern what the Canadian “variation”/hack/workaround is and it adds up to more time and energy than I think is worth my time at the moment.
If anyone knows of a Canadian resource, please do share!
I’m just emerging from a three year period of my life where severe social anxiety kept me from getting out (out of bed most days for a while in the most severe time) and need to figure out ways to make money from home.
Kim says
I’m Canadian too and I’m wondering if anyone gave you any savings ideas.
Janet Wilson says
Thank you for the information. I live in a small southeast Kansas town and the closest Staples is probably 60-120 miles away but if I save and follow your instructions, my trip to Staples would be so worth that.
Sarah Titus says
So glad you like it. Remember that you can order online too. If you have their rewards card, there’s a certain point where you get free shipping! 🙂 Idk the thresholds, but I get free shipping, no minimum purchase amount. 🙂
Elaine Baer says
Sarah:
You are the bomb. Thank you so much for your invauluable resourceful magical self. Elaine Baer, Malibu
Sarah Titus says
Glad it helped Elaine. <3
Jaime Wiebel says
Wow! I thought that I was good at saving money. You, lady, have got the system. I don’t live anywhere close to Staples so we are often forced to go to another local store. Yeah, I know! Thanks for sharing this. I just got the Valentine binder and am very excited about checking it out!
Sarah Titus says
I hope you were able to find some ideas you could use, Jaime. Enjoy the Valentine binder!
Gillian says
Sarah,
I love this, you’ve shared a couple things that I didn’t know about, and I am a Rewards member and have done several things you listed. But, you missed one additional way to save money with Staples.
This likely only applies to going into the store to shop, but I do that when I turn in my ink cartridges. When you decide what you are going to purchase in-store, take out your phone and look up that item or items on Amazon and on Staples.com. Whichever price is less (one will almost always be less than the in-store price), show it to the cashier. They will give you that price, along with the coupons, rewards money, ink cartridge money, etc. I needed black ink and it was about $35 for one cartridge in the store. Staples online had it for $28 and Amazon had it on sale for around $23. It was so cheap, I looked up the 2-pak and decided to buy it instead. I must have saved over $20 just on the ink!
Staples is the best! I need to make sure I’m using my Ebates account, too! Thanks for that tip!
Sarah Titus says
Wow, Gillian, that was a great deal! I appreciate you sharing the price match idea. I will remember that for myself next time I’m shopping. I’m glad you found a few tips you could use as well. <3