Archives for October 2016

New laptop: 15.6″ Acer Aspire ES 15 for $300 [limit 5]

A new laptop is out of the gate and it already has its first discount. For $300 you can get the 15.6″ Acer Aspire ES 15 running Windows 10 Home. It is powered by the i3-6100U processor, which currently ranks #740 at cpubenchmark.net, so definitely not a Photoshop or AutoCAD powerhouse. It is a U-series processor after all. It has 4GB RAM and 1TB hard disk. The screen resolution is what will go on Windows’s tombstone if it gets killed by iPads and Androids, “1366 x 768 non-touchscreen”. Meow! But it has a DVD burner, so take that iOS and Android 🙂

It has the usual connectors, USB full size (Type A) ports (3.0, 2.0), HDMI, bluetooth 4.0, Ethernet port, 802.11ac MiMo Wifi, and so forth. Battery life is “up to” 6.5 hours with a 4-cell battery. Graphics are of course on-board Intel, the HD 520.

The official model name if you want to further research it is ES1-572-31KW.

October 12, 2016 Filed Under: 15-inch laptops Tagged With:

[DEAD] AmazonBasics 5-Piece Bed In a Bag for $16 [limit 3; up to Twin XL]

UPDATE 10/11/16: this is dead, the big shopping websites picked it up, so the price spiked to $25+…

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

Halloween themed T-Mobile Tuesday on October 11

UPDATE 10/11/16: indeed, the Vudu promotion is not a store credit but a free HDX movie rental from a choice of 24 movies. You select them from a list at the special Vudu page that the T-Mobile Tuesdays website redirects you. It looks like this (on a desktop browser):

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

Google Play Gift Card Offer Returns to Rite Aid October 9-15 in 2016

If you are participating in the Plenti Rewards program and you want to stock up on Google Play gift cards, we have good news for you! For the week of Sunday October 9 until the close of business on Saturday the 15th in 2016, at Rite Aid brick and mortar stores, we have the return of the Google Play Gift Card promotion!

The terms are the same as the previous times. You buy a $25 plastic Google Play Gift Card and receive 500 Plenti points. You can verify this by looking at your cash register receipt. It shows the 500 pending points there. You can spend your new points the next day, so you don’t even have to wait that long. 500 Plenti points have the buying power of $5 at Rite Aid, Macy’s, Exxon-Mobil gas stations and the like, so it’s essentially a 20% off discount on the Google Play gift cards that rarely get discounted. The usual limit of two per customer during this promotional week applies.

DID YOU KNOW that you can now use your Google Play gift card balance to automatically play for the Google Music subscription service? You just have to select it from your Google account settings and it will keep using the balance every month until it runs out. With the discount inherent in this offer, you are essentially getting the $10/month music service for $8 per month. This subscription also includes the “YouTube RED” subscription automatically (you have to be logged on to YouTube with the same google account obviously). And you can load thousands of your own songs into the cloud, so both the subscription and your personal collection are blended together, you don’t have to remember what’s where (there are still some artists that are not available in streaming service, plus there is music that is offered directly by the artists, or by new and upcoming artists that is not available in streaming services yet).

October 7, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , , ,

25% off Star Trek Beyond Digital Copy with Vudu coupon for T-Mobile customers

If you previously redeemed any of the Vudu $5.50 store credit offers through T-Mobile Tuesdays, check your email address that is associated with your Vudu account. You may find a unique coupon code that gets you 25% off the current price of the brand new “Star Trek Beyond” movie. The current price for the HDX (1080p) digital copy is $20, so the coupon make it $15.

vudu_startrek_beyond

The coupon must be used by 10/17/16 at 11:59pm ET and can only be used once and only for this particular title.

Regardless of where you buy the movie, Vudu is planning a Viewing Party using the social media hashtag “#VuduViewingParty” at 9pm Eastern on Friday 10/7/16. Vudu won’t be airing the movie, you have to own it on your own and play it on your own, and follow people’s commentary using the social media hashtag.

October 6, 2016 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , , ,

AmazonFresh now $15/month with 30-day Free Trial and $25/$75+ coupon

If you want to try out AmazonFresh or want to use it on a seasonal basis (eg around the holidays or when specific seasonal fruits/veggies come out), they have launched a new promotion, you can now sign-up on a month to month basis. You still have to be a Prime member before you set a virtual foot in the door. The monthly fee is $15 per month, which comes out to $180 per year, in addition to the standard $100/year Prime membership fee. So it’s still slightly cheaper than $299 AmazonFresh membership. You also get a 30-day free trial.

Better yet, if you haven’t done this before, you can use promo code FRESH25 to get $25 off an order of $75 or more. Deliveries are free with orders of $40+, so if you typically have small orders, this won’t help. AmazonFresh has a mix of fresh and packaged items, so you buy items from the latter if purchases in the former are not $40+. The coupon offer expires 12/31/16.

amazonfresh_offer

AmazonFresh has exclusivity of fresh foods at Amazon, but for other, packaged foods, things are more complicated, because you can buy packaged foods in different quantities and different prices in this many different ways:

  • regular Amazon.com purchase
  • Subscribe and Save purchase (often ships from maker)
  • Prime Pantry
  • Prime NOW
  • AmazonFresh

Time for some spreadsheet action to sort them all out 🙂

October 6, 2016 Filed Under: foods Tagged With: ,

[DEAD] October 7-9: 50 Bonus Starbucks Rewards with “Combo purchase” (YMMV)

This 3-day promotion expired…

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October 6, 2016 Filed Under: foods Tagged With: ,

$5 Staples Anniversary Rewards (when you joined)

The general trend in office supply store rewards has been going down and down since the Office Depot – Max merger, but sometimes there are some rays of light. I believe this was launched last year, Staples began sending Rewards customer a $5 Anniversary Reward on their anniversary month of joining the SPLS rewards program. It is delivered as a long coupon code and can be used in-store or online or by phone. It is good until the end of the month it is issued on.

Look for something like this in your emails (this is a search that only shows these emails):

staples_anniversary_rewards

PS: I do not know if this depends on what rewards level you are in order to get these coupons. Staples currently has a 3-tier rewards structure, the more you spend, the higher you climb.

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

Discover’s 4th Quarter 5% Cashback is Amazon, Department Stores and Sam’s Club

No Amazon as a 5% 4th quarter category from Chase Freedom, but Discover saves the day with their 4th quarter 5% rewards, continuing on with Amazon that was also a featured category in the third quarter.

discover_q4_amzn_deptstores_sams

Coming along for the ride with Amazon are Department Stores, another very popular category during the holidays (obviously), along with Sam’s Club. Costco doesn’t accept Discover so they couldn’t include them even if they wanted to. Needless to say, between these three categories, it’s not that hard to get to $1500.

Remember, everything you buy from Amazon qualifies for the 5%, including Prime memberships, and monthly subscriptions, and digital content, and gift cards and such.

As usual, the quarterly spending limit is $1500 per credit card, not per person, so if you have two Discovers, you get $1500 per. By $1500 I mean the purchase maximum, so the most you will get rewards-wise from this is $75. After that, it reverts to the standard 1% (or whatever rate your card is at). This applies to Chase and Citibank as well.

Discover does not allow retroactive activation, so make sure you activate it ASAP!

Strategically, you have to triangulate department store purchases between this and Chase, since they both feature them.

October 5, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: ,

Chase 5% 4th Quarter 2016 categories are now LIVE

October 2016 is here, and this means a new round of 5% cashback categories from some of the biggest credit card companies. We start the Q4 round-up with the Chase Freedom / Ultimate Rewards program. Their 5% categories for the period covering October 1st until December 31st in 2016 are:

chase_freedom_q4_rewards

Yes, this is another holiday shopping season tinged selection, with a variety of Department stores but also Warehouse Clubs joining the party. That includes Costco who is no longer an AMEX-only shop. Warehouse Clubs were also a 5% category in the third quarter, so continue the Sam’s Club and BJ’s and Costco shopping sprees 🙂

Last but not least are the Drugstores, another place of frequent purchases. With all these categories, it’s not hard to reach the quarterly limit of $1500, so plan your purchases according to the various credit card rewards to max out the benefits. Remember the $1500 limit is per credit card, not per person, so if you have two Chase Freedoms, it’s $1500 per card.

The other nice thing Chase does is that you can retroactive earn rewards going back to October 1st even if you active now. There is a deadline before the end of the quarter to activate, but it is very generous. I always pre-activate before the new quarter begins, so I haven’t tested this yet. But they mention it prominently in their FAQs and such.

Here’s the big picture of their 2016 quarterly categories, but keep in mind, there’s no guarantee the exact same line-up will appear in 2017. There’s typically some overlap, but they move things around as well.

chase_q4_2016_wholesale_clubs

October 5, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: ,

Lucky Rewards: FREE Red Top Reserve Greek Yogurt (for members)

It’s back to the freebies for Lucky Rewards members, good until the close of business on Tuesday 10/11/16, you can get a free Red Top Reserve Greek Yogurt just by using your rewards number (or scannable card) at checkout, whether it’s with a cashier or with the self checkout. The only thing you need to do is check your Lucky’s Rewards email and press the big ole red button there to add the offer to your account. Once you do that, you are good to go!

lucky_free_yogurt2

Limit one yogurt per customer during this promotion. You don’t even have to buy anything else from the store, although Miss Manners would argue that you have to buy at least one other item 🙂

October 5, 2016 Filed Under: foods Tagged With: , ,

New Prime Pantry promotion is live, buy 5 participating items, get free S&H

October 2016 is here and this means a new round of Prime Pantry free shipping promotions. The mechanics of the offer are as before, you have to buy five items from the list of participating products and you’ll get free shipping instead of having to pay the usual $6 Prime Pantry shipping fee.

What many people don’t know is that you don’t have to buy five different items, you just have to buy a total of five things. It could be five units of a single item, or any combination in-between. So if you need a specific item and the price is right, you can just buy five units of that item and get the free shipping.

This offer is separate from the occasional slow-shipping Prime incentive that gets you a $6 Prime Pantry credit. Also, some of the participating items may have their own offers, be it clip-on coupons or other combined purchase offers, so pay attention to those as well to make the most of the promotion.

Since Prime Pantry is for Prime members only, I don’t even know why they are charging that $6 box fee since it looks like they are more or less delivered the same way as other Amazon items. It’s not like AmazonFresh where they have fresh and frozen food that needs special handling. Prime Pantry is probably a bit of a “Samsung move” by Amazon, just throw many things out there and see what sticks 🙂

This offer ends 10/31/16 and by reading the terms and conditions, it doesn’t restrict it to one use per customer during this month. So if you are a regular Prime Pantrier, you could try to see if it works a second time as well during the month. I am not currently planning a Pantry order, so I can’t test it at the moment.

October 4, 2016 Filed Under: foods Tagged With:

Rosewood Case for OnePlus 2 for just $0.05 (YES, 5 cents!)

If you have a OnePlus 2 phone and are planning to make an Amazon purchase of $25 or more in the near future, you may want to accelerate that purchase to now! The rosewood and black apricot cases for the OnePlus 2 smartphone are currently on sale for $0.05 (yes, five cents) each at amazon.com with a limit of 30 per color per customer.

They are however an ADD-ON item, so you MUST place an order of $25+ in Amazon-shipped items, otherwise the shopping cart won’t let you buy them. The other thing is that these are estimated to ship in “1 to 2 months”, so you’d need to be patient for your rosewood case party 🙂

I don’t know if this is a price error or not, I’ve seen items offered very low at Amazon for various reasons (eg promotional or clearance or price match), so YMMV.

October 4, 2016 Filed Under: tech Tagged With: ,

HTC One M9 (32GB, Unlocked, No Contract) for $350

With current generation flagships priced so high, a previous generation flagship may be an alternative if none of the mid-tier flagships from upstarts and big names alike strike your fancy. Which brings us to the new condition factory-unlocked no-contract 32GB HTC One M9 going for $350 at amazon.com. Make sure you check that Amazon actual is the seller and not any of the iffy marketplace sellers. Amazon actual is authorized, so you get the USA warranty. The marketplace sellers, I have no clue, so don’t buy from them unless you know for certain.

Note that Amazon’s compatibility listing appears to be inaccurate. Check the reviews and answered-questions and HTC’s own website for more details.

The M8 and M9 were a bit divisive, some people did not like them and prefer the the M7/M10 releases, while others are fine with them. It’s good to have choices in the market, as long as you are willing to do the necessary research to get the phone that best fits your priorities. The M9, just like the M8 (but not the M7) support microSD cards.

October 4, 2016 Filed Under: android Tagged With: , , , ,

Hulu with Ads for $6 per month (for 1-year) [NEW CUSTOMERS]

If you don’t mind seeing TV Ads, the Hulu with Ads plan (they call it “Limited Commercials” in such a lovely Orwellian fashion) is having a new promotion, if you are a NEW CUSTOMER, you can get it for $6 per month for the first 12 months, instead of the usual $8 per month. After the first 12 months, you go to $8 per month (or whatever the price will be at that time). There is no parallel promotion for the Ad-Free plan which continues for $12 per month.

My suspicion is that because they sell ads, they are trying to triangulate paying subscribers vs Page Views, and by lowering the monthly price, they can get more people to sign-up, so they’ll have more page views, and sell more ads. That’s why the no-ads plan is not discounted because they can’t offset ads vs subscription.

Regardless, you can cancel any time. The 12 months are just the price guarantee, you don’t have to remain a paying customer for 12 months.

October 3, 2016 Filed Under: media Tagged With: ,