Archives for May 2016

AMEX Offers: Get $10 Back on purchases at Big Lots and Orchard (YMMV)

AMEX Offers are by definition YMMV, since we don’t know if AMEX makes these offers available on every credit card account or a subset of the accounts. The easiest way to find out is to logon to your AMEX account and look at the Offers section below the “Recent Activity”.

Bubbling around at the moment are two pretty good offers if you like to make general purpose purchases, especially for homeowners. As you can see in the screenshot below…

amex_offers_biglots_orchard

… you get $10 back on a $40+ purchase at Orchard Supply Stores (or their website). Separately, you get $10 back as a statement credit on a $50+ purchase at Big Lots brick and mortar stores (not their website).

It is important to note that while the offers expire by the expiration date shown there, the window to sign up for the offer (the simple task of pressing the “Add to Card” button) is often smaller. Some of these offers have a limited number of activations, so if there’s an offer you may need, add it to your card as soon as you see it.

Refurbished 15.6-inch Acer CB3-531-C4A5 for $115 [ChromeOS]

Many of the Chromebooks are on the smaller side of laptops, but not all of them. With prices dropping on computer screens, you don’t have to get a Windows machine if you prefer a budget 15.6-inch screen. You can get a Chromebook.

And if you are comfortable with manufacturer-refurbished, at Groupon Goods you can get the 15.6-inch Acer CB3-531-C4A5 for $115 with free shipping, and free returns, and a 90 day warranty from Acer.

This obviously has basic specs, 2GB RAM (ChromeOS is not as demanding as Windows, but websites continue to get bloated and fill up with all kinds of widgets and scripts, so keep that in mind), 16GB on-board SSD storage, only a 1366×768 resolution (despite the 15.6″ size), and it eats Celery. And by that I mean it is powered by the Celeron N2830 processor which currently ranks #1556 at cpubenchmark.net.

Peet’s Coffee Coupon: B1G1 Beverage

If you are near a Peet’s Coffee store between May 4-8 in 2016, they are running a Mother’s Day promotion during that time period, offering a “Buy One Get One FREE” on beverages, cold or iced. This is good throughout the day. You can also use this promotion to get two drinks for you, you don’t need two “bodies” in the store to use the coupon 🙂

peets_b1g1_moms

Lucky Rewards members: FREE Chips Ahoy package

The best feature of the Lucky Rewards program is that every few weeks they offer a free item unconditionally to their members. All you have to is click on the link from their email to add the free item to your Lucky’s rewards account and purchase it when you visit the store.

One thing to note, I do not know if every Rewards member gets this offer, or if they are targeted to a subset of their membership. I have no way of knowing this…

luckys_chipsahoy

As you can see from above, the free item is a package of Chips Ahoy cookies. Various options are eligible, 9.5 to 13oz. You have until 5/10/16 to pick this item up. If not, it will expire and disappear.

$10 off future Smart & Final purchase with $50+ in select Gift Cards

Starting with the new May 4 weekly ad, at Smart and Final brick and mortar stores, there is a two-part promotion running until 5/10/16. The first step is purchase $50 or more total in gift cards from a list of options: Macy’s, Michael’s, Fandango, Nike, Panda Expess, Jiffy Lube or Lucille’s. When you make this qualifying purchase, their cash register will print a coupon with your receipt that gets you $10 off your future purchase at Smart and Final.

NOTE: the fineprint in their weekly ad says that gift cards can only be purchased with cash or a debit card. I don’t know if this is a new restriction, because I remember in the past buying gift cards with credit cards (when they have the 5% quarterly grocery rewards offers).

3-5pm (or 6pm) Local Time at Starbucks: Half off Frapp Blended Drinks (until May 15)

This promotion at Starbucks is good for everyone, from 3pm to 5pm local time, until May 15 in 2016, you get half off any frappuccino blended drink you buy from them. No coupon is needed, it’s an automatic “Happy Hour” in their cash register 🙂

But if you are a Rewards member, you get an extra hour. That’s right, your hours are 3-6pm local time. So if your local store gets too busy between the 3-5pm happy hour, you can go later and avoid the longer lines.

halfoff_blended_sbux

YMMV Starbucks Rewards: Try Three Items, Get 75 Bonus Stars

Check your emails since I don’t know if all or some of the Starbucks Rewards members get these promotions. I post these based on the emails in my inbox since I have no way of knowing whether the promotions are available to all or some.

Starbucks continues its “charm offensive” to get people back on track with their new One-Percenter Rewards program 🙂 This is actually a pretty good deal, you earn 75 Bonus stars (that’s 60% of a Reward) if you buy one item from each of the following three categories:

  • any handcrafted Chai Tea Latte (you will also make Oprah happy)
  • any handshaken iced tea
  • any Food item (the picture has a breakfast sandwich, I think they mean food from their bakery display, not prepackaged food you get off the shelf)

75_bonus_stars

So if you buy an iced tea, and the $3 Egg-Cheddar breakfast sandwich and a Chai Tea Latte, that looks to be around $10, and you get 60% of a reward back plus the stars for the purchase prices, let’s say 20 Stars. So you have 95 Stars out of 125 with this. Assuming you redeem your future reward for a $6 item, that’s the redemption-equivalent of getting $4.50~ back.

At the bottom of the email, there is a “JOIN NOW” button. When you press it, it opens a confirmation page that you are set to earn rewards through this promotion. The bonus stars will be added to your account by May 19 in 2016.

This offer ends May 9 in 2016.

Cordcutters: 1TB TiVO Roamio OTA DVR for $400 without Monthly Fee

If you are a cordcutter and watch only a little over-the-air TV, a basic no-name Over-the-Air DVR for under $40 may be good enough for you. If so, check our unboxing of the Mediasonic HW-150pvr (review coming as soon as I can transfer my thoughts and notes on paper).

On the other hand, if you are a power-viewer and power-user and watch something equivalent to what you are used to with your cable or TiVO DVRs, now there’s a brand new release from TIVO without the dreaded monthly fee. $400 is what it takes to get you the 1TB TiVO Roamio OTA DVR from Amazon which ships in about 2-4 weeks from today.

Unlike the basic sub-$40 OTA DVR mentioned above, the new TiVO model allows you to record up to four shows at the same time, basically covering the prime time of four your favorite OTA networks.

Other features include a commercial skip mode, an option to play video faster to save you time (for slow-moving or talking-heads type of shows), and has some integration with streaming services (eg Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant Video, etc) so you can watch it all from one place.

If 1TB is not enough, you can use external TiVo-ready NETGEAR ReadyNAS storage (you have to purchase these ones, but your TiVO itself includes 1TB of internal storage).

Kindle First eBook Options for May 2016 are up

If you are a Prime member, one of the many benefits is a free pre-release e-book from a choice of 4 or 6 every month. The choices change on the 1st of every month, and you can pick one per month. If none of them speak to you immediately, wait a few days until they pick up more customer reviews ~ sometimes those can be helpful in deciding.

Without further delay, the May 2016 choices are:

  • “Enemy (On the Bones of Gods Book 1)” by K. Eason in Fantasy
  • “A House for Happy Mothers” by Amulya Malladi in Contemporary Fiction
  • “We’re All Damaged” by Matthew Norman in Modern Fiction
  • “The Butterfly Garden” by Dot Hutchison in Thrillers
  • “About the Night” by Anat Talshir and Evan Fallenberg in Literary Fiction
  • “Time Heals No Wounds (A Baltic Sea Crime Novel)” by Hendrik Falkenberg and Patrick F. Brown in Mysteries

To see the options and read customer reviews of them, check Kindle First page by 5/31/16. Here’s a partial screenshot of that page:

kindle_first_may_2016

Free Samsung Book Deals options for May 2016 are up

If you have an eligible Samsung device, and you have installed the Kindle app from the official Samsung App store ~ whatever its name is these days 🙂 ~ and you are logged on to it with your Amazon account, you can receive one FREE e-book for May 2016 from a choice of four ebooks.

All four of these ebooks (and previous selections) are part of Kindle Unlimited, so they typically have plenty of customer reviews to help you decide whether to get them or not. You have until 5/31/16 to make a choice.

You can see the May 2016 options in the screenshot below:

samsung_book_deals_may_2016

TIP: the price has to be $0.00, otherwise you will be charged!

YMMV: 125 Stars when you sign up for Spotify Premium Free Trial

If you are a Starbucks Rewards member, check your emails. You may be eligible for a new Starbucks-Spotify co-promotion. The promotions include a unique promotional code for each email, so you have to do this through the Starbucks email.

The promotion here is that you get 125 Stars (which translate to one Reward item) when you sign up for a 3-month free trial of the Spotify Premium subscription service. You have to sign up by 5/15/16 and you will receive the Stars via email by 5/31/16.

sbux_spotify

Free Spotify users who previously used the 7-day free trial are eligible, but not users who previously tried Premium or Unlimited. Check that email for more details.

PS: with all these Starbucks promotions, I have no way of knowing whether everyone or some of the Rewards members get these offers, since they are sent individually by email, they are not posted on a Starbucks website.