Archives for May 2016

Huawei Honor 5X for $160 (Unlocked 4G LTE, No Contract)

Mid-range is the new flagship in the world of smartphones these days as technology has advanced to the point where you can have a nice phone without breaking the bank on a flagship (unless you want to or it has must have features or performance).

If you are in the former category, the official NewEgg eBay store is offering the new condition, unlocked with USA warranty, Huawei Honor 5X Metal smartphone (formal name KIW-L24) for $160 with free shipping. You have three colors to pick from (gray, silver or gold) and up to five devices per eBay buyer (NewEgg enforces the limits). Already nearly 900 units got sold as of posting time.

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May 17, 2016 Filed Under: android Tagged With: , , ,

Prime members: Buy $5 Snack Bar Sampler, Get $5 Credit for Future Purchase of similar

We continue to check the hot new promotion that is the Amazon Sampler Boxes, restricted to Prime members only. We already covered the $10 Protein Sampler and the $5 Snack Sampler but there’s a third box that is related, this time it is a $5 Snack Bar Sample Box. You will receive at least five samples. There may (or may not) be some overlap with the other two categories in terms of sample uniqueness, but they are all edible 🙂

snack_bar_sampler

Just like before, when you reach the last step in the Checkout page (see screenshot with drawings above), you will get confirmation in the main section of the shopping cart that your order is eligible for this promotion. But that’s not all, you also get a confirmation in the right sidebar, below your order total (screenshot below):

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May 17, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: ,

Plenti program now offers 3% Dining Rewards (by linking credit/debit cards)

The Plenti Rewards program added a new dimension to its rewards program. You can earn 3% rewards when you dine at participating local restaurants and pay with a credit or debit card that is linked to your Plenti account. This is a low friction promotion, so if you lose nothing by signing up for it. Let me explain…

plenti_dining

The Rewards Network finds the transactions
If you have a Plenti rewards account, you can sign up for the Local Dining Rewards feature by linking your credit or debit cards you plan to use to pay at restaurants. This is how they will recognize the transaction, you don’t show them your Plenti rewards award, so you don’t have to look like a couponizer 🙂

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May 17, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , ,

Prime Members: Buy $5 Snack Box, Get $5 Credit Towards Future Purchase of Snacks

The Post Office (or UPS or whichever delivery services are tasked with this) are going to be very busy delivering Amazon sample boxes in the next few days. Amazon is rolling these type of promotions faster than I can type 🙂

I already mentioned the most versatile promotion of this lot (the Protein Bar offer). This one is not as good but the price is definitely right.

So the routine is the same as before, you have to be a Prime member. You buy this Snacks Sample Box for $5 with free shipping. You are guaranteed to get at least five snack items, but no guarantees you will receive a specific brand.

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May 17, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: ,

LG G Stylo for $90 [Prepaid; Boost or Virgin]

I should preface this by saying that this is a phone with many trade-offs, so be sure to read up on the various reviews before buying it. Don’t buy it just because the price is low! If you are comfortable with its trade-offs, then it’s not a bad deal.

For $90, you can get the new condition LG G Stylo prepaid (no contract) smartphone running in either the Boost or Virgin Mobile network, both of which are “living” on Sprint’s network. The sale is by a marketplace seller but the order is fulfilled by Amazon, so you get some extra protection by dealing with Amazon’s shipment facilities and customer service.

You don’t have to sign up for any service with this phone, you can simply use it as a Wifi-only device. Size is not everything, just because it has a 5.7-inch screen it doesn’t mean it’s a flagship. It has only 1GB of RAM but comes with a built-in stylus, which is its main draw ~ eg if you want a note-taking type of a phone.

If you like the idea, but you find this too under-powered, a second generation is rolling out, out of the gate going for twice as much (perhaps the sale price is not a coincidence).

May 17, 2016 Filed Under: android Tagged With: , , , ,

Prime members: Buy $10 Protein Bar Sample Box, Get $10 Credit for Future Protein Bar Order

We have good news for you if you are a Prime member and like to try different protein bars! Amazon is expanding its “Sample Box with Credit” promotions. A few weeks ago we mentioned the K-Cup sampler promotion (currently unavailable). Now they are offering a similar promotion for protein bars.

protein_sampler_box_prime

If you haven’t done anything like this before, here’s the TL;DR:

  • you are a Prime member
  • you buy this $10 Protein Bar Sample Box (you get at least 8 of them)
  • One Week after Order Shipment Date (not Purchase Date), you get an email from Amazon saying they added a $10 credit to your Amazon account (this is behind the scenes, you don’t need a coupon code)
  • THEN you can use that $10 credit to buy select Protein Bars, sold by Amazon, not marketplace sellers. Over 2000 items are eligible (don’t buy these until you get your email informing you of a $10 credit!!!)

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May 17, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , ,

Lucky Rewards: FREE 4oz Colgate Toothpaste

UPDATE 5/15/16: the store I visited had signs for this offer for the Crest toothpastes instead of the Colgate. I am not sure what’s going on. I was in a hurry so I did not attempt to buy them to see what would happen…

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May 12, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , , ,

Earn 1500 Plenti Points on New Hulu subscription

The Plenti rewards program is having a new limited time promotion. If you were not a Hulu subscription during the last 12 months, and you start a new paying Hulu subscription, you will receive 1500 Plenti points after your first monthly charge. Hulu comes with a 7-day free trial, but you will earn the Plenti points after your first monthly payment.

plenti_hulu

You must link your existing Plenti card to your Hulu account. After you do that, you can also take advantage of various 200 point promotions from Plenti-Hulu (eg watch 10 comedy episodes get 200 Plenti points).

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May 12, 2016 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,

FatWallet no longer offers Cashback ~ You have two options

If there’s one thing that is certain on the internet, nothing stays the same! As of today (May 10 in 2016), Fat Wallet is no longer offering cashback on new purchases. For your existing Fat Wallet cashback, you have two options:

  1. Cash out your existing FatWallet balance to your PayPal account of record or via check
  2. Transfer your account to eBates

The eBates offers says you will receive a $10 bonus if you make a qualifying $25+ purchase within 90 days of the transfer.

fatwallet_ebates_transition

Fear not, “Pending Cashback” will not go to waste ~ they will honor it and add it to your balance. But don’t sleep on this, you must request your cashback (or do the transfer) by October 31st in 2016.

Details at the Fat Wallet Transition page and the more detailed FAQ page with many of the most common questions answered.

May 10, 2016 Filed Under: shopping

May 10-23: Bonus Stars for Visits after 2pm Local Time (SBUX Rewards)

Starbucks Reward offers continue to arrive via email, but please keep in mind, I do not know if everyone is offered these, or a subset of their Rewards members or if they send them out on different dates or different regions. I can only post what I get from the Starbucks emails. So YMMV as usual…

Between May 10-23 in 2016, Starbucks wants you to visit after 2pm local time, as the new “Dash/Challenge” gets you 50 Bonus Stars if you visit 5+ times, OR 100 Bonus Stars if you visit 7+ times during this time period.

You have to manually “Join the Dash” there is a banner to click in the Starbucks email for this promotion. So this particular offer requires manual activation.

sbux_after_2pm

The rewards will be added to your account by 6/3/16 if you qualify. I do not know if they define 5 visits as five different days or five separate transactions. Since the rewards will be sent after the promotion, there is no easy way to find out ahead of time, so if you want to be on the safe side, assume it’s five different days.

This is a so-so offer, since 7 visits don’t even get you a full reward. 100 points is only 80% of a reward, while 50 points is only 40% of a reward.

May 10, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: ,

11.6-inch HP Chromebook 11 G4 (4GB RAM) for $150

The Chrome OS is resisting temptations to bloat like a Windows balloon but unfortunately more and more websites continue to bloat as they add all kinds of direct and indirect advertising and advertorial and clickbait content (“You May Like This, If Your Cat Likes That!”). So that may be one of the reasons why your older Chromebook is starting to feel more and more sluggish. Regardless…

… this brings us a new sale at MacMall, they are offering the new condition HP Chromebook 11 G4 for $150 with free shipping. Despite the low price, this has 4GB of RAM, which it is starting to become almost a must-have if you are planning to use a Chromebook for more than unitasking and visit many commercial websites.

Other specs include the customary 16GB of on-board storage, the dual-core Intel Celery N2840 (which ranks #1526 at cpubenchmark.net), an
11.6-inch TN non-touchscreen with 1366 x 768 resolution, card reader, HDMI, USB ports (one 3.0, one 2.0), Bluetooth 4.0 (remembers way back when ChromeOS did not support Bluetooth Audio???), 802.11ac, and such.

May 10, 2016 Filed Under: 11-inch laptops Tagged With: ,

[DEAD] May 10-16: 25% off Lunch Item with Coupon (Starbucks)

This limited time promotion expired but more offers are coming in the future…

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May 10, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: ,

Pre-order 15.6″ Acer Aspire E (i5U, 8GB, 256GB SSD, 2GB Nvidia, 1080p) for $550

Things are getting competitive in the world of laptops once again. If you like to be among the first to try new models as they roll out, Acer has a new power-value model coming up soon with a starting price of $550, the E5-575G-53VG, part of the Aspire E line-up.

For that, you get a 15.6-inch 1920 x 1080 display with a dedicated graphics card, the NVIDIA GeForce 940MX with 2GB DDR5 VRAM. It has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD if you are no longer fond of churning hard disks. The processor is the Intel Core i5-6200U which currently ranks #588 at cpubenchmark.net.

The lower performance is because this is a “U” processor, which in turn promises up to 12 hours of battery life on a 6-cell battery running the included Windows 10 Home.

Creature comforts include an 8X super-multi-format DVD burner, 802.11ac Wifi, HDMI out, the new USB triumvirate (USB 3.1 Type C, along with two USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0 ports), Bluetooth 4.1, Gigabit Ethernet, and such.

NOTE: as far as I can tell from the specs and pictures this does NOT have a touch-screen.

As of the time of writing, this is available for pre-order at Amazon by Amazon actual for $550. There is no shipment estimate at the moment.

PS: as usual with new releases, there is always a risk since a product is an unknown, so if you hate this “boldly going” type of thing, you may want to wait until reviews come out or go for one of the laptops that has already been released and has been “vetted” by shoppers and reviewers alike.

May 7, 2016 Filed Under: 15-inch laptops Tagged With: ,

11.6-inch Samsung Chromebook 3 (with 4GB RAM) for $200

The ChromeOS is a fairly lightweight operating system, but the same cannot be said for today’s web as websites get bigger and bloat-ier, especially the bigger page-view driven websites. So a Chromebook with better specs may be needed to keep up with the website growth (more than the ChromeOS bloat).

Which brings us to the 4GB version of the third generation Samsung Chromebook, model XE500C13-K02US, currently on sale for $200 with free shipping at Amazon.com. This is only $20 more than the 2GB model, and that $20 is definitely worth it if you are browsing more than one website at a time.

Other specs include 16GB of on-board storage (but cloud and USB ports can give you a lot more storage), the budget 11.6-inch 1366×768 screen resolution. It is eating celery, which is a roundabout way of saying it is powered by a Celeron processor, the N3050 which currently ranks #1595 at cpubenchmark.net.

May 7, 2016 Filed Under: 11-inch laptops Tagged With: ,

Buy $10+ Starbucks eGift Card with VISA Checkout, Get $10 Bonus

Don’t sleep on this offer, because it’s both a limited quantity and a limited time offer! Good until 5/17/16 or when 325,000 people take advantage of it (whichever comes first), if you purchase a Starbucks eGift Card from their website of $10+ AND pay for it with VISA Checkout, a $10 bonus will be automatically added to the gift card amount.

You can send this to your own email address or send it to another person’s. Its your choice. Starbucks don’t care but they have a limit of one per customer during this promotional period.

starbucks_visa_checkout_bonus

The bonus amount will not show in the VISA Checkout process, but a few minutes after you place the order, you will receive an email from Starbucks with the gift card and that will have a +$10 egift card bonus.

If you already have a Starbucks card in your account, you can also directly transfer the new gift card balance to your existing card. It’s only a matter of a few clicks, if you don’t want to shuffle multiple gift cards in your Starbucks app.

May 6, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , ,