Archives for June 2016

15.6-inch Acer Chromebook 15 for $230

Speaking of budget laptops, on the Chromebook side of things, if you are fond of the 15.6-inch form factor, there is a sale on the Acer Chromebook 15, model CB5-571-C1DZ, going for $230 with free shipping at Amazon by Amazon actual. This comes with a nice 4GB RAM but only 16GB on-board storage which can however be augmented using the two USB ports, the memory card slot, and of course the cloud. The screen is a 1080p IPS, but not a touchscreen.

It is a Celeron powered model, it has the Dual-Core 3205U which currently ranks #1239 at cpubenchmark.net. The review average is 4.4 out of 5 based on almost 500 of them, but multiple variations are clustered together in a single review page. The options 2 or 4GB RAM and 16GB or 32GB SSD, and Accessory Bundles (mouse and bag).

June 20, 2016 Filed Under: 15-inch laptops Tagged With: ,

Costco launches new VISA credit card for members

If you are a Costco member, the times they are a-changing! It’s goodbye American Express and hello VISA, more specifically, Citibank VISA. That’s the new official credit card for purchases at their stores and website and it comes with a different rewards program. You can see a summary in the screenshot below:

costco_VISA_creditcard

You get the usual 2% cashback for purchases at Costco, except for Gas prices that earn 4% at Costsco but also at other gas stations. Restaurants and travel earn 3%, while everything else that doesn’t fall into the above categories gets the usual 1% default. The gas purchases have an annual cap of $7,000 per year at 4%, and then the usual 1%.

Strategically, you can do better in each of these categories if you participate in the quarterly credit card bonus rewards from Chase, Discover and Citibank. However, those are quarterly and you rarely get enough overlap between them in the various categories to carry you throughout the year. So when you can’t a favorable 5%, Costco’s numbers (on Gas, Restaurants, Travel) are better than a 2% default credit card (eg the Citi Dividend that pays you on the payment end of things).

Remember that Citi Forward has pulled the plug on their generous 5% on Amazon and Restaurants/Entertainment, so the options are more limited now.

June 20, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , ,

Pre-order 14-inch HP 14-an013nr for $220 [Win10; SSD]

ChromeOS put the fear of R’hllor in Windows, so Microsoft and its trusted OEMs have been on a steady barrage of budget SSD-based “cloud books” trying to compete on specs and price ranges with ChromeOS.

A brand new volley in this War Without End comes from HP in a typically under-represented screen-size, at 14-inches. It is the unsexily named “HP 14-an013nr” coming with 4GB RAM and a 32GB SSD but with a 1920×1080 IPS non-touchscreen display. That’s a plus considering the starting price of this Windows 10 laptop is $220.

The processor is on the low end of things, the AMD E2-7110 QC but it’s not as bad as some other models, it currently ranks #1104 at cpubenchmark.net. Some of them in this price range rank outside the Top 1500. Still the usual caveats apply if you are planning to do heavy multi-tasking or use multiple apps in parallel.

The specs mention 802.11ac and Bluetooth but no mention of USB ports or memory card slot. It does NOT have a DVD burner. This was just added, so I’m sure the listing or at least customer reviews will give more info.

Keep in mind, the web itself is getting more bloated, especially the big popular websites as they add more and more widgets and clickbait content and ever-scrolling features. Which is why I now recommend 4GB RAM even for Chromebooks if you planning multi-tasking.

This new laptop is, as of the time of writing, available for pre-order for $220 at Amazon by Amazon actual.

June 20, 2016 Filed Under: 14-inch laptops Tagged With: ,

Great Plenti Gift Cards deals at Rite Aid 6/19 to 6/25/16

If you are part of the Plenti Rewards program [see our TL;DR if you are not familiar with it], there are some hot gift card deals running there between Sunday 6/19/16 AM and Saturday 6/25/16 PM. The two best offers are:

  • Earn 500 Plenti Points on $25 Google Play Gift Card (limit 2)
  • Earn 800 Plenti Points on a $50 eBay Gift Card (limit 1)

That’s a 20% discount on Google Play and a 16% off discount on eBay. Both are pretty good discounts, especially considering these too are rarely discounted. Unlike iTunes that has discounts all the time. Plenti is a pretty good program, and if all else fails, you can redeem your points at Exxon-Mobile gas stations since almost everyone needs to refuel their cars.

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

5% Chase Freedom Rewards for Third Quarter of 2016 are Restaurants and Wholesale Clubs

The third quarter of 2016 is looking to be another hot one for Chase Freedom Rewards member. Their 5% cashback categories, with the usual $1500 purchase cap, are Restaurants and Wholesale Clubs which includes Costco, Sam’s Club and BJ’s. As usual, restaurants include a variety, from fast food to fancy restaurants, and in previous iteration, this also included some semi-restaurants, like Starbucks.

chase_q3_restaurants_wholesale

You can begin earning these 5% rewards between July 1st and September 30 in 2016. You can activate the promotion now, but the earnings in these categories begin July 1st.

Strategically this works great, because for the second quarter (ending June 30, 2016), you are earning 5% at Restaurants with Discover and Grocery Stores and Wholesale clubs with Chase. In other words, the Wholesale club promotion continues this quarter as well.

NOTE that for WholeSale Clubs, certain purchases (gas/fuel and specialty services) are NOT eligible. If not sure, contact Chase or do a trial-and-error thing by doing the math on your statement.

If you have multiple Chase Freedom credit card, each one has a limit of $1500 in purchases. In other words, the maximum reward you will earn from this promotion during a calendar quarter is $75 (5% of $1500). Any orders above $1500 in those categories will simply earn the usual 1% cashback. So if you have multiple cards, strategically split your orders between them if you are anywhere near the quarterly limits.

UPDATE: Chase has a list of eligible Restaurants, of interest if you are wondering whether your favorite chain stores are eligible. Independent and individual restaurants are NOT listed there but they are eligible.

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

AMEX Offers: $15 Back on $30+ Google Express

If you have an American Express credit card, login and check your AMEX Offers now! One hot offer rolling at the moment is a promotion that gets you a $15 statement credit when you make $30+ in Google Express purchases. You must first “Add to Card” the offer to activate on your account before making the purchase.

amex_google_express

Once activated for YOUR account, the promotion is good until 7/31/16. However, if it’s not activate, the option to activate it will likely not be available until the expiratin date. The options to activate them are typically limited time and limited quantity, they disappear faster than their expiration. To cut a long story short, if you see a potentially interesting offer, add it your AMEX account ASAP!

Once added to your card, you have until the expiration date to use it!

June 16, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: ,

Lucky Rewards members: FREE 20oz Alfaro’s Bread

Those free breads you cannot chain! Or something like that 🙂 Postpone going gluten-free for one more week because Lucky’s continues its charm offensive for their Rewards members (free and quick to join in-store) with a new freebie for the shopping week ending Tuesday 6/21/16. It is a 20oz loaf of Alfaro’s Artesano Bread.

lucky_rewards_free_bread

As usual you must add the offer to your Lucky Rewards account by clicking the red button in the email informing of this offer. You can also verify that it is added to your account by checking your Rewards account online or using their mobile app.

June 15, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , ,

Garden Flower Adult Coloring Books for $2.62 (32 illustrations)

If you want to jump on the adult coloring book bandwagon without breaking them bank, you can append this to your future Amazon order, it is the Darice Garden Flower book going for just $2.62, in new condition, at Amazon. The catch is that it’s an Add-On item, so your order total must exceed $25, even if you are a Prime member. This averages 4/5 based on 16 customer reviews over there. You can buy as many as you want of this, so you could get to the $25+ limit with ten of them in your shopping cart.

June 14, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With:

Replacement Coffee Filter Set for some Keurig B-series coffee maker for $2

If you like to use Keurig machines but prefer to load them up with your own coffee ground, and you have one of select B-series models (B30, B40, B50, B60, B70), you can get a Replacement Coffee Filter Set from “Daily Bread Essentials” (that’s the manufacturer’s name) for just $2~ at Amazon by Amazon actual. The limit is 20+ per customer. The product description lists the incompatible models as well.

There’s one catch to this though, it’s an Amazon Add-On product, so you have to make an order of $25 or higher in eligible items. If not, the shopping cart will simply refuse to let you buy it, even if you want to pay for shipping out of your own pocket. Strange indeed but that’s the Add-On Item world 🙂 The $25+ restriction also applies to Prime members. This restriction is separate from the free shipping $49+/$25+.

This little thing has amassed nearly 1500 customer reviews with an average 3.9 out of 5 and has 100+ questions answered. So do check the reviews and answers, and check the search boxes for both if you want to make sure it works well with your specific model.

June 11, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: ,

10-disc QUEEN 40TH Anniversary Collector’s BOX SET for $26 w/free S&H

One of the timeless rock bands for the ages is QUEEN, and their 40th Anniversary Collector’s Boxed Set that consists of 10 discs, five full albums and five bonus EPs, is on sale for $26 with free shipping by Target’s eBay store. A total of 83 tracks are included, 27 of which are from the five bonus EPs. Limit six sets per customer during this particular sale. No digital copy is available, so you’d have to convert them to mp3/flac on your own.

June 11, 2016 Filed Under: music Tagged With: ,

Freebies for T-Mobile Tuesday June 14 have been revealed!

Freebies time! The T-Mobile Tuesdays app has revealed the four freebies’ for Tuesday June 14, 2016. Three of the four freebies are the same as last week, perhaps giving people a chance who missed out on the first giveaway to get them again.

Here’s a screenshot of the freebies with their names annotated on the page. The new freebie is a Lyft ride up to $15. It replaces the Fandango “Warcraft” movie ticket. The other three are the same. The Dominos medium 2-topping pizza and Wendy’s small frostie should work fine, the only question is whether the Vudu movie rental offer is good even if you took advantage of last week’s. Last week’s Vudu code expires Monday 6/13/16 night, so you can’t stack them.

tmobile_tuesdays_june_14

Even though the offers are one per line, last week, you could only have one Vudu movie rental credit per Vudu account. The movie rental credit can also be used for purchases of movies or TV shows. It’s really a $5.50 Vudu store credit 🙂

PS: if you are not familiar with how these work, check out our T-Mobile Tuesdays Explainer post.

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

[DEAD] Lucky Rewards: Free 10oz LaLlave Espresso Tin

This weekly offer expired… It was one of the best freebies from Lucky Rewards for sure!

[Read more…]

June 9, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , , ,

[DEAD] June 9-12: Teavana Coupon: $25 off $60+ order

This weekend promotion expired…

[Read more…]

June 8, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , ,

[DEAD] Friday June 10: Two For One Iced Teas at Starbucks (everyone, not Rewards)

This 1-day offer expired, but if you are a Starbucks Rewards member, you can get infinite iced tea refills, so if you are not a “To Go” shopper, you can “simulate” the 2-for-1 by keep refilling while you are in the store ~ and get one last strategic refill before you leave the store 🙂

[Read more…]

June 8, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With:

Adult Coloring Book for under $5 (of interest to Prime)

Adult Coloring books are here to stay. They were not just a summer or seasonal fad. More and more adults, and even buttoned up stores (eg office supplies stores) are now heavily promoting them. So if you feel the temptation but don’t want to put too much money into this curiosity, then $5 is all you need to spend…

… to get this “Adult Coloring Book Designs: Stress Relief Coloring Book: Garden Designs, Mandalas, Animals, and Paisley Patterns” by Twigler at Amazon.com. Limit 30 per customer. Free 2-day shipping if you are a Prime member (thankfully it is not an Add-On Item; I hope I don’t jinx it). Since it is a book, non-Prime members can get free shipping with $25+ in books (eg six of this) or with a general $49+ order.

The book averages 4.3 out of 5 based on 560+ customer reviews. If you don’t want to spend money on fancy coloring pens and markers, a trip to the local dollar store can get you a set of colored pencils or markers for $1, and if you really get into it, then you can upgrade to fancier pens 🙂

June 8, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: