Office Depot Business FAQ: Credit Cards, 'Out of Business' Searches, and the Cost Checks That Matter

Some questions show up in my inbox every quarter. This particular set landed three times in the last month, so I'm putting the answers in one place. Context first: I manage purchasing for a 140-person logistics company near Columbus, Ohio. Office Depot Business has been one of our main suppliers for about six years, covering copy paper, toner, print services, and the occasional furniture order. These are answers from my own experience. If your company looks different, run the numbers for your own situation.

Is Office Depot going out of business?

No. If you've seen 'Office Depot out of business' trending, that's not what is happening, at least as of spring 2025. The rumor cycle follows The ODP Corporation's restructuring. If I remember correctly, ODP agreed to sell the consumer-facing Office Depot and OfficeMax retail operations to Staples, while the business-to-business side stayed separate. Headlines simplified that into something that sounded like a liquidation, but a company restructuring its ownership is not the same as a company vanishing.

From where we sit, not much changed. Our account stayed active, deliveries kept coming, and our rep stayed the same. That doesn't mean you should ignore the news. Whenever a major supplier goes through an ownership change, we download our order history, confirm who to contact, and make sure there is a second source for critical items. It's not panic-buying toner; it's vendor risk management.

Are Office Depot business credit cards worth using for purchasing?

People ask whether Office Depot business credit cards are worth it. We've used one for several years, and my short answer is: yes, if the balance is paid in full every month. Carry a balance and the interest will erase the rewards quickly. Which is a long-winded way of saying the card isn't the problem; the balance is.

The terms I remember from our last cardholder mailing were 5% back on qualifying Office Depot purchases—but don't quote me on that, because they seem to change whenever the agreement renews. Let's say the reward rate is 5%: on our average monthly spend of about $3,500, that's $175 a month, or roughly $2,100 a year. That's real money, but not a return on investment.

We keep the credit limit modest, reconcile the statement against our purchasing system every month, and ignore points when making a sourcing decision. If the total cost of ownership is better elsewhere, we buy elsewhere, even when it means fewer rewards.

How do I check an 18% 'savings' claim? A percentage decrease calculator makes it easier

A supplier can tell you that switching will reduce your office supply cost by 18%. Maybe it will. But I don't accept a savings percentage until I have compared it against our actual order history.

The formula is simple: (old amount - new amount) ÷ old amount × 100. Example: a basket of items that cost us $37,650 last year is priced at $30,800 under the new proposal. $37,650 minus $30,800 equals $6,850. Divide that by $37,650 and you get 18.2%. Then I do the same calculation on individual line items, not just the total. What I mean is: an average percentage can hide a lot.

One quote we received actually looked like an 18% decrease until I added the freight minimum and a packaging upcharge that weren't visible on the summary page. The real decrease was 11.4%. Now I run every savings claim through a percentage decrease calculator and compare identical SKUs. Per FTC advertising guidelines, savings claims are supposed to be truthful and substantiated, but that doesn't make them complete.

When should we use Office Depot Business print services instead of doing it in-house?

In-house printing often looks cheaper because the printer is already there and the employee is already on payroll. What people miss is the loaded cost of that person's time.

Here is a real comparison. We needed a print job that would take our office manager roughly 6.5 hours of hands-on work. She earns $24 an hour. Since we are in Ohio, I ran her wage through an Ohio paycheck calculator as a starting point, then added employer-side taxes and benefits. Our fully loaded rate came out to about $31 an hour. That put her labor at roughly $201 before we bought a single sheet of paper. Add supplies, and the in-house option was no longer the bargain it seemed.

We sent that job to Office Depot Business Print. In-house still wins for small, urgent jobs. But once a task eats half a day of a salaried person's time, the service option deserves a real look.

How does a 3D printer work, and should an office buy one?

Let me answer the first part in plain English. Most office 3D printers are FDM printers—fused deposition modeling, if you want the term. They push a plastic filament through a heated nozzle and lay it down in layers. Think of a computer-controlled hot glue gun. A slicing program turns the 3D model into G-code, which is basically a list of coordinates telling the nozzle where to move. Typical layer height is around 0.2 mm, which is why printed parts have a slightly ribbed surface.

Should your office buy one? It depends less on the printer and more on whether someone can design parts. We bought a relatively inexpensive model because our facilities team needed custom brackets. It worked. But it required two hours of design time and an hour of setup and troubleshooting, and we paid for that time whether the print succeeded or failed. The purchase price was only part of the real cost.

So: a 3D printer is useful if you have design skills and regular small-part jobs. If you don't, you're not buying a tool; you're buying a hobby.

What's the hidden cost most people miss on an Office Depot Business account?

If you want the question nobody asks, it's this one. Most buyers track the price on a box of toner and ignore the recurring charges riding along under it. Last year we audited our Office Depot Business account and found an auto-ship toner cartridge for a printer that had been recycled fourteen months earlier. The orders kept coming because nobody cancelled the line after the printer went away.

Now we review repeat orders every quarter. I export the last twelve months of order history, sort by total spend, and look for three things: auto-ship items nobody remembers setting up, shipping upgrades when standard delivery would have been fine, and quantities that are higher than our actual usage justifies.

In other words, the unit price is only one line on the budget. What often costs more is the line nobody reviews.