Archives for December 2015

Free Taylor Farms Bagged Salad for Lucky’s Rewards members

The actual Lucky Rewards program is fairly average with just a 1% of the purchase price. However, what makes it great is that every few weeks, Lucky’s offers an unconditional freebie to its Rewards members. This is a screnshot from their email:

free_salad_lucky_rewards

All you have to do is locate the email with the promotion, and click that red button to add the promotion to your Lucky’s rewards account. Then buy it in-store before the deadline, and their cash register will automatically deduct it. If you are using self-checkout, it may need an override from an employee.

Which brings us to now, good until they close on Tuesday 12/8/15, you get a free bag of Taylor Farms Bagged Salad. Options includes different varieties ranging from 5 to 12 ounces in weight. The email does not specify all the eligible options, so you have to go in-store to spot those.

I haven’t picked mine up yet (I will post an update once I go there and see what options are available).

December 6, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , ,

9oz Skittles Original Flavor pouches for $1.29 (Add-On)

Taste the rainbow! If you are fond of the original flavor of the Skittles (and want to buy your dentist a new car), the 9oz resealable pouch of the originals is on sale for $1.29 at Amazon.com. There is a limit of 90 bags per customer. The price is great but there is a catch: this is an Add-On items, so their shopping cart will only allow you to purchase it if your order total is $25 or higher. This restriction applies to Prime members as well. You can get to $25+ with any combination of eligible items (shipped/fulfilled by Amazon). Or buy $25+ worth of Skittles (20 pouches).

December 5, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With:

Buy $125+ in Select Gift Cards, Get $20 off in future purchase at Smart and Final

Smart and Final is back with another gift card promotion, this one running from December 2-15 in 2015. If you make a total purchase of $125 or more in select gift cards, you will receive a coupon code for $20 off a future purchase at Smart and Final. The $20 off coupon must be used by 12/29/15. The $125+ purchase must be made in a single transaction, it will print at the register if it qualifies.

A total of 11 gift cards are eligible for this promotion. Enough for a soccer team 🙂 This includes big stores like Kohl’s and Lowe’s, along with specialty stores like Nike and Sephora, and restaurants like iHOP and Panda “MSG” Express, and Cold Stone Creamery. Also eligible is the orange “Dinner and Movie” gift card that is Darden restaurants (for the dinner part) and Fandango for the movie part.

December 3, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: ,

Dec 6-12: Buy $300+ in Gift Cards, Get $20 Staples Gift Card via Easy Rebate

There’s a new twist in the Staples Gift Card Easy rebate promotion that will run from December 6-12 in 2015 at their brick and mortar stores. The buy $300+ in Gift cards and a get a $20 Staples Gift Card via Easy Rebate is back and this time all three major credit cards are participating: VISA, Mastercard and American Express.

staples_gift_card_promo_returns_all_three

I don’t recall seeing this offer before, so I don’t know if you have to get to $300+ with one kind (eg only VISA gift cards) or any combination. This offer is a money-maker if you can get to $300+ with two or one gift cards because of the unavoidable activation fees. With two gift cards ($200 + $100), you pay $13 activation fee but you receive a $20 gift card, so you end up with a $7 return on a $313 investment with a 1-month vesting period. Can your investment adviser guarantee such a return? 🙂

TIP #1: these sell out fairly quickly, so if you want a good chance of finding them, you may have to be there as early on Sunday as you can. There are some “professional shoppers” who buy multiple of these, even though it is limit one per customer. Grandma and Grandpa becomes very popular when extreme couponers want to use them as mail-in rebate participants!

TIP #2: Gift cards are not refundable, so make sure the items you get are eligible for the promotion and you won’t change your mind. While other rebate items (eg the various copy paper offers) can be returned if you change your mind or you accidentally get the wrong items, gift cards are not returnable. So pay extra attention to the terms and eligible options!

December 3, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , , , , ,

HTC Desire 626S (Virgin Mobile) for $90

Phone discounts left and right! If you are using Virgin Mobile or if you simply need another Wifi-only device as an in-home remote control or media player, the no-contract HTC Desire 626s (the “s” is part of the name, it is newer than the 626) is currently on sale for around $90 at Amazon.com. This price is a by a marketplace seller fulfilled by Amazon (eligible for 2-day Prime), while Amazon’s own price is around $93. You own the phone immediately and you are under no obligation to sign up for a Virgin Mobile plan.

But keep in mind, this runs on the Sprint network (which is what Virgin uses), so you can’t use it with other providers as a cellphone. You can of course use it as a Wifi device anywhere.

December 2, 2015 Filed Under: android Tagged With: , , , ,

AMEX Offers: Spend $30+ at Exxon Mobil, Get $10 back

If you have an American Express credit card, logon to your account and check the special offers. One of the latest making the rounds is a promotion that gets you $10 back as a statement credit if you make a purchase of $30 or more at Exxon Mobil gas stations by 12/31/15. You have to manually add this offer to your credit card.

exxon_amex

Once added, this offer expires 12/31/15. However, if you don’t add it to your card, it can disappear from the available offers at any time. This is because of two restrictions: there is a limited number of sign-ups per offer, and the offers may also have a limited runtime of their own regardless of the sign-ups. So, to summarize, when you see an offer you may perhaps use in the future, add it to your AMEX card right away!

TIP
If you have multiple AMEX cards on the same account (in other words, the same login account), pay attention to which account number you add the offer. It will only work if you use the card with the offer on it. Otherwise, no luck and customer service won’t fix it for you.

Note also that a lot of the offers are only shown to a subset of their cardholders. So you won’t have available to you every single offer you see mentioned on the internet. How AMEX decides to offer what to who(m), I do not know, it’s probably part of their “secret sauce” targeting system.

December 2, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: ,

Kindle First options for December 2015 now available

It’s December 2015 already, time sure does fly, and with it we have a new selection of Kindle First selections. There are six pre-release e-books available. Prime members get one of them for free, while non-Prime members can purchase one of $2. If you like more than one, you have to wait until January 2016 to purchase them at regular prices or borrow them from Kindle Unlimited (if you are a paying subscriber).

kindlefirst_banner

Since these are brand new, they have very few customer reviews, so if none of them speak to you, you can wait for a couple of weeks until they pick up more reviews and the wisdom of the crowds sorts them out.

Without further ado, the six options are:

  • “Terms of Use” by Scott Allan Morrison in Thrillers
  • “Grave of Hummingbirds” by Jennifer Skutelsky in Literary Fiction
  • “A Death in Sweden” by Kevin Wignall in Conspiracy Thrillers
  • “Before Goodbye” by Mimi Cross in Coming of Age
  • “The King of Taksim Square” by Emrah Serbes and Mark David Wyers in Modern Fiction
  • “Out of Sorts” by Aurélie Valognes and Wendeline A. Hardenberg in Contemporary Fiction
December 1, 2015 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: ,