Archives for June 2016

50% off one Google Play Movie Rental

Digital movie rentals can be insanely high for newly released for-rental movies, so coupons and special promotions are a good idea if you want to watch a new movie now, and not wait for it to make its way to Netflix or cable TV. Which brings us to Google Play, if you go to the Google Play store and look at the main offers there, one of them is a promotion that gets you 50% off the rental price of one movie. The promotion is good until 8/7/16. But once you rent the movie, you have the usual 30 days to watch it.

You should see something like this in Google Play (screenshow below):

half_off_google_play_movie_rental

You must first add the offer to your account, and then their checkout system will automatically apply the discount when you try to rent an eligible movie. There is no coupon code to enter, just add the offer to your account. If you have multiple Google accounts on your device, make sure you add it to the correct account!

Prime Day PRO TIPS: use 5% Cashback Credit Card, Etc

These are some refresher tips that can help save you even more! Now that we know that Amazon Prime Day is July 12, in 2016, you have time to make some preparations!

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Prime Day is Tuesday July 12, 2016

One of the latest benefits of being a Prime Day is an annual “Prime Day” every July. This year’s Prime Day will take place on Tuesday, July 12, in 2016. Tuesday is a good choice because most people are spaced out on Mondays, recovering from the shock of going back to work and from whatever adventures they had during the weekend.

Already, Amazon has setup a Special Page with teasers of the various promotions that will be running during that day. If you are not a paying member right now, you can still participate by starting a 30-day free trial. There are free trial buttons all over the place on that page (if you are not already a Prime member ~ they don’t show those to Prime members for obvious reasons).

If you are NOT a Prime member you can start a FREE 30-Day Trial and participate in the July 12 festivities. If you don’t like the Prime membership, make sure you cancel it before the 30 days are over, and you won’t be charged.

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Subsidized Phone: BLU R1 HD for $60 (Prime members only)

There’s a new development in the world of phone-buying and this time around it’s not T-Mobile that is changing things up, but rather Amazon. This new promotion is available to Prime members only, and borrows from the Kindle e-reader Special Offers philosophy. You get the phone at a discounted price and for that you get Special Offers on your Lock Screen, below your Notifications and have Amazon apps pre-installed on your device. This is still a no-contract unlocked phone, with the only exception being the Amazon subsidy restrictions.

The first phone to participate in this promotion is the brand new Blu R1 HD. It is available as either a 1GB RAM with 8GB on-board storage for $50 subsidized (or $100 unsubsidized), or 2GB RAM with 16GB on-board storage for $60 subsidized (or $110 unsusbisized). The decision between the two is crystal clear. For an extra $10, you have to to get the 2GB RAM and 16GB on-board storage. You will have fewer performance and multi-tasking restrictions with twice the RAM and internal storage!

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Teavana 4th of July coupon: $15 off $40+

While we are on the topic of tea, Teavana has a new coupon code for the 4th of July weekend. Coupon FIREWORKS gets you $15 off an order of $40+. Free shipping is available for orders of $50+. If you are looking for shopping ideas, here’s their new arrivals page. The coupon expires 7/4/16.

TIP: Teavana is now part of the Starbucks rewards program. You can use your Starbucks app to pay there and earn rewards. You can also redeem your Starbucks rewards for 1oz of loose leaf tea of your choice (one Starbucks Reward = 1oz of tea). This is only possible through their stores, not their website.

12 Boxes of 16-count YamaMotoYama Genmai-Cha TeaBags for $22

Genmai Cha is such a comfort tea to drink. It tastes a lot better than it sounds, a nice combination of toasted rice (yes, that’s right!) and green tea. And you can get a pretty good deal on it, you can get a dozen boxes of the Yamamotoyama brand. Each box has 16 tea bags, sealed in aluminum foil. So that’s 192 tea bags. It goes for $22~ at Amazon.com or slightly less if you do the subscribe and save.

This comes out to under $2 per box, a pretty good price, since the typical store price (if you can find it) is $3 per 16-pack. I am actually drinking this very tea as I am posting this 🙂

Free 128GB microSDXC card with new Sony X Unlocked Smartphone for $550

Sony’s new line-up of X-series smartphones has arrived in the US market, and the mainstream option of this line, the “Sony Xperia X” is now available for $550 in four different colors, but that’s not all! Amazon.com is bundling this with a 128GB Sony-brnaded microSDXC memory card for the same price of $550. This is pretty good since the phone can take microSD cards up to 200MB! This particular combination is in-stock and shipping as of the time of writing.

This is their flagship deputy (or sidekick, choose your own analogy here), with a 5-inch 1080p display, 3GB RAM, 32GB on-board storage plus the aforementioned microSD slot. It is running Android 6.0, and is powered by the Snapdragon 650 and Adreno 510 combination. Its camera has a decent size sensor for a smartphone, a 1/2-inch Exmor RS.

The big decision for Sony fans may be between this and the X Performance flagship. Many of the specs are similar between the two, but the X Performance has the Snapdragon 820 and Adreno 530 combination and a slightly larger battery, along with IP68 water resistance certification (one of the early signature characteristics of Sony flagships). This goes for $700 and does not come with a free memory card. It is expected to ship in mid July.

The product pages mentioned above have a detailed list of compatible GSM providers as this is a factory unlocked phone with a USA warranty. The USA market has the usual suspects, AT&T, T-Magenta (okay, T-Mobile), their prepaid sidekicks (Cricket, MetroPCS), Straight Talk, Net10, H20 Wireless, and more.

T-Mobile Tuesdays Freebies revealed for June 28

UPDATE on the Bon Appetit Offer
This is a 1-year digital subscription but to get started you need to provide name, email, and mailing address. You can select whether to receive any emails from Bon Appetit or not. Once you do that, you get an account number and then you can get your digital subscription on iPad (iOS) and Android (Google Play) and Nook (using Barnes and Noble account) and Kindle Fire (Amazon account).

UPDATE Tue 6/28/16 at 3:52pm ET: things are more stable now, but yet another way to get the Rewards faster is to use the text message that T-Mobile sends you to your registered phone numbers. It uses a live T-Mobile subdomain and gets you all the promo codes in one page. This works for three of the four offers, Wendy’s can only be redeemed in-store when you are facing the register.

UPDATE Tue 6/28/16 at 2:30pm ET: technical difficulties continue… Remember the offers expire at 5am ET on Wednesday so if you try late at night, you can still get them. This does not help with Wendy’s though since that has to be redeem “LIVE” at the cash register in Wendy’s stores… Hopefully they’ll extend the offers until Friday like they did last week…

ORIGINAL POST
Another week is here, which means if you are a T-Mobile customer, a new round of freebies arrives on Tuesday June 28, 2016. The freebies have been teased on the T-Mobile app (which requires an upgrade if you are on Google Play, so do it NOW, before the Tuesday madness begins).

They are, as you can see in the screenshot below:

tmobile_tuesday_june28

  • 1-year Digital Subscription to the magazine “Bon Appetit” (does not say how the digital subscription will be delivered)
  • One Movie Theater ticket through Fandango
  • A $5.50 store credit for Vudu (returning offer)
  • A small Frosty at Wendy’s (returning offer)

CAUTION for VUDU CREDITS: they expire SOONER
For some reason Vudu voids the credits BEFORE the end of day on Monday. I just checked now on Monday before 5pm ET, and my credit disappeared. So my suggestion for Vudu is to use the credit as soon as possible. Do not wait until after the weekend!

June 2016 Free eBook Options for eligible Samsung Devices

If you have an eligible Samsung device (not all of them are qualifying for this promotion) AND if you have also installed the Kindle app from Samsung’s own app store, then you can get a free e-book from a choice of four options every month. These previously released ebooks are also part of the Kindle Unlimited subscription (KU), so if you have that, and your Samsung device is not eligible, you can read them through KU.

The offers run anew in each calendar month, but as usual, don’t wait until the very last minute to get them as time zone differences and IT issues may cause you to miss them. This particular round is good until June 30, 2016.

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ShopDiscover: 10% back on Samsung Store purchases

If you have a Discover credit card, check the ShopDiscover section of your account. You may be eligible for a promotion that gets you 10% cashback on purchases made at the Samsunng website until 6/30/16. Here’s a screenshot of that. Look at your account for more details.

discover_10percent_cashback_at_samsung

NOTE however that there are some exceptions to this promotion, as you can see in the screenshot below:

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5% Discover Q3 2016 Credit Card Rewards is Amazon and Home Improvement

The third quarter (July 1 until September 30) of credit card cashback rewards in 2016 is another promising one. We already mentioned that Chase Freedom gets you 5% at Restaurants and Wholesale Clubs. Complementing that is Discover, whose Q3 promotions cover Amazon and Home Improvement stores. They have the same limit of $1500 total spend in those two categories for the quarter.

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Three of the T-Mobile Tuesdays Offers Extended until Friday June 24

It’s hard to argue against freebies, even if you have to jump over an extra hoop. This week’s T-Mobile Tuesdays June 21st freebies had technical hick-ups as well, so to make up for it, T-Mobile is offering a grace period on three of the four offers!

If you haven’t already claimed any of those offers, do not be disheartened by the app or website telling you they expired. Go in the Expired section and find the offers with a 6/22/16 expiration date for Vudu or MLB or Lyft. Click on them. Pay attention to the fineprint, circled in the screenshot below:

tmobile_extended_until_friday

Click on the magenta “More Info” link and you will get a page full of unique redemption promo codes for the Vudu ($5.50 credit), MLB ($20 off), and Lyft (ride up to $15). Write down those numbers or take a screenshot, or cut and paste the text (it is text) and save it in a note or Dropbox or Evernote or your desktop.

Then proceed with the redemption. The Wendy’s offer has not been extended but it looks like it will return next Tuesday (June 28) per the text there.

These make-up extensions of the offers are good until Friday 6/24/16.

ViewTV AT-163 OTA Converter Box and PVR for $28 w/free shipping

If you want to be an OTA cordcutter but still have rudimentary DVR functions, there’s a number of chinese budget boxes under $40 floating around. One of those options is currently on sale on eBay, it is the ViewTV AT-163 Converter Box going for $28 with free shipping and handling. This ships from New York and already over 740 units got sold from this particular offer.

I haven’t used this particular ViewTV model, but I am using a similarly-priced model that is in the same ballpark in terms of features, the Mediasonic HW-150PVR. I still have to write-up the full review, but to cut a long story short, if you are comfortable programming a VCR, you should be fine with its user interface. I am not even using an external hard drive on mine, just this tiny 128GB USB 3.0 flash drive. It takes up no space, and requires no external power!

T-Mobile Tuesdays Freebies for June 21: MLB Coupon, Lyft $15 credit, Vudu $5.50 credit, Wendy’s Frostie

It is Tuesday, and if you are a T-Mobile member, this means it’s freebie time again! As of 2:07pm ET, the T-Mobile Tuesdays website is returning server errors. Their apps were working fine earlier in the day. The freebies for this week are three carryovers from last week, and one new offer, a $20 off coupon for purchases at the MLB website.

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YMMV Double Starbucks Rewards June 20-26 in 2016

This appeared in the Starbucks app, so I don’t know for certain that the same dates apply to every Starbucks Rewards member, but running between June 20-26 in 2016, you get Double Rewards Stars on every purchase made at Starbucks. There’s no coupon to enter, no opt-in, no action to take. This happens automatically.

You see this in your Starbucks app Home Screen or Messages section:

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