Archives for May 2016

Panera Catering Rewards: Get $20 for every $500

Paneral has a regular rewards program for store purchases but that’s not all. Their rewards program is also expanding to Catering purchases. For every $500 you make in Panera Catering purchases, you earn $20 in Panera Rewards. This is a screenshot from their website promoting this:

panera_catering_rewards

You need a Panera Rewards account and a Panera Catering account for this. Catering is on the expensive side of things, so if you are a regular customer of their catering, the rewards can add up quickly. This is essentially a 4% reward ($20 / $500).

PS: yes, I am spelling police, that’s why I double underlined “recieve” 🙂

Battlestar Galactica Season 4.5 BluRay for $5.30 (not a typo!)

If you are missing the second half of the final season or if you only want to have the last ten episodes, the BluRay with Season 4.5 of the rebooted Ronald D. Moore “Battlestar Galactica” TV series is on sale for around $5.30 at Amazon.com, and that’s not all. This is Prime eligible, ships from Amazon’s warehouses, and it is not an Add-On item, so if you are a member, you get it delivered to you without the need for additional purchases to get free shipping.

This comes in three discs, with a total of ten episodes, episodes 4-11 to 4-20. If you don’t remember what’s what, refresh yourselves with the episode list at the very useful and very lightweight on the browser epguides.com.

10pk Taylors of Harrogate Yorkshire Black Tea for $1 (Prime Pantry)

If you are planning to place a Prime Pantry order, here’s one little thing to add to your order, especially nice if you are creating gift or care packs for multiple people. It is a 10 tea bags of Yorkshire Black Tea by Taylors of Harrogate for $1. So you get a sealed pack with ten of them inside.

You can buy up to 30 of them for one order. This is fairly small, only occupies 0.2% of a standard box. The usual caution applies, if you buy chemicals and other things that may spill or roll and crash, you may want to split orders between fragile and non-fragile items. You don’t want to receive your tea as a pancake 🙂

2oz Teavana English Breakfast Loose Leaf Tea for $5 (w/free S&H for Prime)

If you are a Prime member and you are non-flowery-tea Teavana-curious, $5 will get you delivered to your front door 2oz of Teavana English Breakfast Loose Leaf Tea.

Even though it’s $5, it is not (as of the time of writing, I don’t want to jinx it) an Add-On item, so as a Prime member, you get free 2-day shipping for it. You can buy up to 30 of these at this price. This tea averages 3.9 out of 5 based on 32 customer reviews over there.

3.53oz Twinings Prince Of Wales Black Loose Leaf for $5

It’s tea time! If you like to get started in loose leaf tea without having to do a time-consuming immersion, this is a pretty good deal at the moment, you can get 3.53oz of loose leaf Twinings Prince Of Wales tea, in a tea tin (which you can reuse later), for $5 at Amazon.com. This is a blend of Chinese black teas, which are typically milder than the Indian black tea blends found in the traditional English breakfast blends.

If you do “Subscribe and Save”, it drops by 5% or 15% depending on how many other S&S items you have at that particular shipment month.

The only catch with this is that it is an Add-On item, so you have to place an order of $25 or more, even if you are a Prime member, otherwise their system will simply not let you purchase it. Even if you want to pay shipping out of your own pocket, they will just refuse it. So if you don’t need anything else from Amazon right now, add it to your shopping list or “Save Later” or make a mental note.

Plenti: Make $150+ online marketplace purchases, get 300 Bonus Points (ends 5/31/16)

With the FatWallet cashback rewards program folded into eBates, there are fewer old-internet cashback rewards options, so you might as well switch to something new and more flexible.

If you are part of the Plenti Rewards program [check our TL;DR post if you are not familiar with it], it also has a similar online shopping cashback component where you earn a small percentage back in Plenti points on select purchases.

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Lucky Rewards: FREE 2L A&W Root Beer

The sugar is strong with this offer. If you are a member of the Lucky Rewards programs (see our TL;DR if you are not familiar with it), they continue their streak of one free item per week for their Rewards members (free and easy to join, in-store or online).

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Is Amazon planning Business Sample Boxes too?

Amazon is already running a number of offers on Food and Household Sample Boxes (see also the sidebar), but are they also planning to start business boxes too?

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Starbucks Survey Rewards are 10 points with new system

The random customer surveys did not go away after Starbucks rebooted their Rewards program last month. You still receive them randomly by email after a visit. The “encouragement” now is 10 Bonus Points added to your account within 3 days after you complete the survey.

[Read more…]

Prime Only: Buy $5 Cookie Sampler, Get $5 to spend on Future Purchase of Similar Items

The party continues, Prime members have yet another option to buy a sample box, and then use the purchase price of the sample box towards a future purchase of similar items [see previous offers].

And now we have something sweet, something you may need to spend a few more hours on the treadmill to burn, it’s the Cookie Sample Box. You pay $5 with free shipping and you get a box with at least five samples. You have to be a Prime member to get them. There’s only one shipping option (see screenshot with drawings below), you can’t select faster or slower.

amzn_cookie_sample_box

As you can see above, you get confirmation in the shopping cart that you are eligible for this offer. There’s also another confirmation note on the right side of the page ~ in case you are a confirmation hypochondriac 🙂

About one week after your order ships, you will receive an email from Amazon telling you that a $5 credit has been activated in your account. Then and only then, you can use that credit to make a purchase of similar items, from 276 options. Do not buy from here until you receive your $5 credit email. (if you want to get a better feel for this, check our older post back when they had a K-Cup offer (no longer available!)

1-year (50 issues) Entertainment Weekly for $10

If you love getting a weekly magazine with glossy pictures about movies and TV and entertainment, Amazon has a limited time offer, for just $10, you get a 1-year auto-renewing subscription to Entertainment Weekly. This is the printed physical magazine that you will receive weekly by mail.

If you are not familiar with auto-renewing subscriptions, they work like this: you pay now $10 and get one year (50 issues). Each year, your subscription will automatically renew at the renewal price that is current at that time (it will be higher than $10 for sure). This will continue to renew unless you manually change it. Amazon will send you email before it will auto-renew each time. You can cancel auto-renewing subscriptions through your Amazon.com account, you don’t have to deal/fight with customer service representatives. Check their help pages over there for more details on how they work.

Virgin Mobile Phone Sale headlined by Motorola Moto G for $85 (3rd gen; 1/8)

This is a nice deal, especially if you have available Virgin Mobile balance to pay for it, the third generation of the Motorola Moto G is on sale for $85 with free shipping, in new condition, without contract requirements, at Virgin Mobile. Please note however that this is the lower end model with 1GB RAM and 8GB on-board storage, so if you are reading reviews, make sure you pay attention to the distinctions. Motorola makes a 2GB RAM with 16GB on-board storage model, unfortunately that’s not available at Virgin Mobile.

While there, they have a couple of other prepaid phones on sale as well:

  • Kyocera Hydro REACH for $70 {you have to add it to the shopping cart to see the price}
  • Huaweii Union for $30

Note that these are locked to Virgin Mobile which runs on the Sprint network, so if you are fond of the more open GSM systems, these won’t work there. You may or may not be able to run them on other Sprint systems, check the various Android phones to see what else you can do with them. Do not assume they will work anywhere else unless you find out for sure.

But if you don’t want to use the cellular part, these definitely make good budget Wifi-only device for lightweight use at the home, eg a remote control of different media and internet of things products.

May 22-28: $20 VISA Gift Card via EzRebate with $300+ prepaid VISA Gift Card purchase

If you are a fan of doing the Staples gift card rebate promotions, we have good news for you! The VISA promotion is returning at Staples brick and mortar stores for the week of May 22-28 in 2016. The terms are as before, you buy $300+ in prepaid VISA gift cards, and you will receive a $20 prepaid VISA gift card by Easy Rebate (you can submit it online, no need to mail anything in).

staples_visa_GC

The gift cards you buy have an activation fee, so to make this a money-maker deal, you have to get to $300+ by buying two or one gift cards. Finding $300+ unicorn gift cards is near impossible, so most people do this with a $200 + $100. You then submit the Easy Rebate at the Staples rebates website, and wait for 4-6 weeks for the rebate to arrive in the mail. Assuming you spend your $20 prepaid VISA gift card bonus wisely, it’s about a 2% return on investment ($20 gift card minus $13 in activation fees = $7). Not a bad return considering today’s interest rates 🙂

PS: three gift cards (eg three $100) are technically also a money-maker, but a profit of $2 on a $318 investment might be too small for many people to consider it worth their time.

50% off Coconut Beverages at Peet’s Coffee stores (ends 5/22/16)

Climb aboard the Coconut Hype Train! There you will find your local Peet’s coffee shops having a nice promotion. Good until the close of business on Sunday 5/22/16, you can get 50% off all their coconut beverages. There is no actual coupon code to memorize, simply show the barista the email with the offer or print it or just mention the offer, and you will get your discount. Limit one per customer per visit.

peets_coconut

The usual restrictions apply, the offers are not good at airport or supermarket or licensed locations.

The beverages never look as good as in the pictures, but the pictures from the email look soooo yummy! Every single one of them. Four days, a different one per day 🙂

peets_coconut2

PS: For an even better deal, if you load or reload $20+ on a Peet’s gift card, you get $1 off your beverage purchase. But you may want to run this offer for something you are paying full price. You don’t want to wear out your welcome, especially if you are going to be getting multiples of these during this promotion 🙂

Lucky Rewards: free 4oz Cracker Jack package by 5/24/16

It looks like we may be getting free items on a weekly basis from the Lucky Rewards program until the end of June 2016 as part of their “Chase The Savings” promotion. The latest freebie is a 4.125oz package of Cracker Jack. As usual, before you get it, you have to press the red button from the Lucky’s email to add the offer to your rewards account.

Once you do that, you can “buy it” at the local store (make sure you enter or scan your rewards card!) and the price will be adjusted by their computers automatically. If you are using self-checkout, an employee may be needed to press something to make it go through. Offer ends 5/24/16.

cracker_jack_lucky

These are “use it or lose it” offers, so scoop it up before the deadline if interested!