Archives for November 2016

AMEX Offers: Spend $5+ at iTunes, Get $5 Statement Credit

If you have an American Express credit card and like to shop at iTunes, check your latest AMEX Offers! Their new offer is pretty good, if you make $5 or more in purchases until 12/31/16, you will receive a $5 AMEX statement credit. You don’t even have to spend the $5 in a single transaction. This is a cumulative offer. It has a limit of one per customer during the promotion.

amex_itunes_5back

As with other offers like this, you have to manually first add it to your account by clicking the “Add to Card” button in the Offers section of the AMEX website. If you have more than one card on the same login, make sure you are activating it on the card you intend to do so.

Note also that while the offer is good until 12/31/16, the time frame to add it to your card is often shorter, because they sometimes have a limited number of activations. To cut a long story short, if you are planning of using it, add it to your account as soon as you see it, don’t assume it will be available to sign up for until the end of the promotional window.

Having said that, once you add it to your card, the offer remains in your account until the expiration date. The shorter time frame is for adding to your account, not using it (once you activate it).

November 11, 2016 Filed Under: media Tagged With: ,

T-Mobile Tuesdays for 11/15/16: Wendy’s, Fandango Rental

The T-Mobile Tuesday freebies for November 15 in 2016 are a mix of freebies and coupons. We have two returnees, the $5 Fandango movie rental credit (cannot be used for purchases; only movie rentals), along with the Wendy’s small frosty which is the longest running freebie.

tmobile_tuesday_november15

There’s also a coupon, which is not a freebie, and may be doing more damage than good because it’s really more advertising than a coupon. But I’m digressing. The coupon is 25% off any Logitech UE speaker. It will probably be 25% off list price, so I don’t even know if the coupon could beat sale prices at the big online retailers.

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

November 10-14: B1G1 Holiday Drinks at SBUX (2-5pm, Extra Hour for Rewards members)

It may not even be mid-November, but the holiday drinks are rolling out at Starbucks, and to encourage us all to give them a try, the introductory “Buy 1 Get 1” promotion is back! It runs from 2pm to 5pm local time, and it is good for everyone, you don’t need to be a Rewards member. But if you are a Rewards member, you get an extra hour, you can order them until 6pm local time. The cash register can tell this when you pay with your Starbucks app. Which may be handy if your local stores get too busy during the 2-5pm mad rush to double the sugar at half the price 🙂

sbux_holiday_drinks_b1g1

If you are not sure which drinks qualify as holiday drinks, check their website or menu online or in the app (the Ordering section), or ask one of their employees. Their cash register is the ultimate decider on what qualifies since that’s the one that will give you the discount 🙂

November 10, 2016 Filed Under: foods Tagged With: ,

AndroidPAY: Free Panera “You Pick Two” with $10+ order

Check your emails or Android PAY offers! Google is running a new co-promotion with Panera. If you place a $10+ at Panera using AndroidPAY, Panera will add a FREE “You Pick Two” to your Panera account. You can take advantage of this offer once per week, it’s not once per account, so it’s a big plus for regular Paneraheads. The offer ends 11/24/16.

panera_androidpay

The “You Pick Two” is a legit reward, you get two half-portions of any sandwich, salad or soup. It’s a solid lunch!

I haven’t done this offer, so all I can tell you is what’s in the emails. I will update this if I do, but I’m trying to cut back on bready sandwiches these days.

November 8, 2016 Filed Under: foods Tagged With: ,

Prime Slow Shipping Credit options may include $20 Home Services credit

If you are a Prime member, and you want to select slow shipping for your Prime-eligible purchase, among the options you MAY see in the Amazon shopping cart is a $20 credit for Amazon Home Services. These are all kinds of services that people provide for you (for a fee of course), ranging from simple (eg assemble a bookcase) to complicated (fix problems with the house). The option doesn’t always show, it seems to vary depending on what product and price-range you have in the shopping cart, zipcode, and whatever other reasons their shopping cart uses to decide.

It looks like this (screenshot below). The link there points to a short page with the terms of the promotion. There we learn that it expires by 2/28/17 if not used.

amzn_slow_shipping_home_services

Personally I prefer the free Prime Pantry shipping option more than anything, since the digital credits ending up getting me to buy more digital content I will realistically not consume (eg ebook daily deals) 🙂 But at least for Prime Pantry, there’s an alternate way to get free shipping, buy five or more of the monthly features products [see our earlier post on those].

November 7, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With:

T-Mobile Tuesday for 11/8/16: Subway Cookies, FandangoNow Movie Rentals

UPDATE 11/8/16
FangandoNOW is having technical errors on their website that make it impossible to redeem your $5 T-Mobile Tuesdays credit. If you have an active Tuesdays credit, you get “Internal Server Error” when you try to rent something. Once the credit expires, you can order again without error.

I do not know if this is a true error or a sneaky way to cut down on the number of people who use the $5 credit. Either way, it looks bad for T-Mobile Tuesdays which is starting to look more like a marketing gimmick than actual “GET THANKED” freebies. More proof that T-Mobile is at best a half-Uncarrier, definitely not the people’s champion that the magenta CEO loudly champions them as 🙂

ORIGINAL POST
A decided turn towards the meh are the T-Mobile Tuesday freebies for November 8, in 2016, where we have a more coupons and non-freebies than actual freebies. I guess they can also get so many freebies before it deteriorates 🙁

Visual spoilers below with details after the picture:

tmobile_tuesday_november8

The actual freebies are actually only 1.5 of the offers. The rest are coupons and non-freebies. The list of actual freebies first:

  • $5 FandangoNow Movie Rental, can only be used towards rentals, you can use it towards multiple rentals for lower prices movies, you don’t have to spend it all at once ~ make sure you check to see the movie is not in Netflix or Prime or any other service you are already subscribed to
  • two Subway cookies
  • that’s it!

The rest are non-freebies. The other option at Subway, instead of the two cookies, is to pay $4 for a footlong Turkey breadwich. Meh! Hotels Tonight is just a $30 off coupon, while the Vote thing is not even a freebie, just a PSA type of thing.

Whining as we may, they are freebies still, but that’s one of the reasons some people signed up or are choosing to remain with T-Mobile 🙂

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

New PrimePantry Free Shipping Promotion (buy 5+ of select items)

November is here, and if you like to shop at Prime Pantry but don’t like paying that annoying $6 shipping fee, there is a new round of select items that trigger free shipping for your order. You have to buy at least five of them, but they don’t have to buy five different items. It can be any combination, for example, you can buy five of the same item. They have a variety of categories, making it easier to find something if you are a regular Pantry-shopper, including breakfast items (cereals, protein bars, etc), along with household items (eg toilet paper), health and beauty items, beverages, snacks, and such.

PS: Prime Pantry is for Prime members only, but you still have to pay a $6 flat fee per order. This Pantry thing is different from AmazonFresh which has a monthly fee. So much confusion when it comes to buying food-related products at Amazon, because there’s also PrimeNOW and Subscribe-and-Save, in addition to a good old Amazon purchase 🙂

November 5, 2016 Filed Under: foods Tagged With:

Free until 11/7/16 ebook: “Spin” by Robert Charles-Wilson (Tor)

Amazon is not the only one offering free e-books every month. While the Kindle First choice can be picked up until the end of every month by Prime members, the free e-book choice at the Tor eBook Club is only available for the first few days of every month. For this month, good until November 7 in 2016, you can get the book titled “Spin”, the start of a new science-fiction trilogy, by author Robert Charles-Wilson. You have to enter your email address and country to get the freebie.

The e-book is available in two digital formats, ePUB and MOBI (of Kindle interest). You download those files and then it’s up to you to load them on your e-reader. Remember, you can also email ebooks to your Kindle, you don’t have to connect it via microUSB.

November 5, 2016 Filed Under: media Tagged With: ,

Free Shipping at Teavana with coupon

If you want to buy something from the Teavana website but don’t want to make a big enough purchase to qualify for free shipping, we have good news for you, good until 11/6/16, coupon code OHYEAH gets you free shipping without a minimum purchase amount required. In addition to buying any of your favorites, you can also check their Sales page to see what else they may have. You can sort that page by price, and when you do, items start at around $2.50!

November 3, 2016 Filed Under: foods Tagged With: , ,

Nov 6-12: buy $20 Netflix Gift Card, get 400 Plenti Points (limit 2)

Good news Netflix users! In addition to the Black Friday Plenti offer, Rite Aid is offering another Netflix gift card offer for the week of November 6-12 in 2016 at their brick and mortar stores. The amounts are different for this offer, buy a $20 Netflix gift card and get 400 Plenti points to use in the future. That’s a 20% virtual discount. The promotion is limit two per customer for the week. Typically they carry the $15-to-$100 Netflix gift cards, so you have to tell the cashier that you want $20 loaded on your gift card.

PS: 400 Plenti points have the buying power of $4 at Rite Aid, Macy’s, Exxon-Mobil and other participating places. I’ve been doing these gift card Plenti offers for a few months now, and they do work as expected. Just make sure you get the right amounts and during the correct week 🙂

November 3, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , , , ,

November 6-12: the Staples VISA Easy Rebate $300+/$20 via EzR returns

The VISA Easy Rebate promotion returns at Staples stores for the Brick and Mortar shopping week of November 6-12 in 2016. The terms are as before, buy $300+ in prepaid VISA gift cards, and receive a $20 prepaid VISA gift card via Easy Rebate. As usual, the trick is to get to $300+ with two cards, so your activate fees ($7 for $200 and $6 for $100 gift card) are less than the $20 Easy Rebate. So with two gift cards, you are making a $7 profit on a $213 investment. That’s a 3.3% return on investment with a 4-6 week vesting period. Your Savings account can’t beat that 🙂

staples_visa_gift_cards

PS: this offer is even better if your credit card has higher cashback rewards on office supplies purchases. For example, Chase Ink gets you 5% cashback on office supplies. You buy these gift cards with the 5% cashback, and then spend them on places that normally yield a lower cashback percentage. A 3% boost from a $200 purchase is $6, so add that to your “return” 🙂

November 3, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , , ,

Nov 6-12: 20% off GAP family of gift cards at Staples

If you are a fan of shopping at the GAP family of companies or if you want to buy some gift cards for the upcoming holidays for friends and family who love them, Staples stores will be having an in-store 20% off sale on the GAP family of gift cards between Sunday November 6 and the close of business on Saturday November 12 in 2016. This will happen automatically at the cash register, no coupon, no rebate, the register will mark them down to the discounted price.

staples_20_percent_off_gap_gift_cards

The gift cards cover the GAP stores, Banana Republic, Old Navy, and a few more brands and variations of their group.

November 3, 2016 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , ,

YMMV Opt-In Starbucks Rewards: 30 Bonus Stars on Nitro Cold Brew

Just in time for the winter, Starbucks Rewards has launched a new Bonus Stars promotion. As usual, these offers are YMMV, I have no clue how many people get offered each promotion. Check your emails or the latest Starbucks app offers to see if you qualify. If you do, you must opt-in to this offer by clicking the “Activate” button in your emails or the relevant button in the app.

sbux_rewards_nitro_coldbrew

Once you do, between November 3-9 in 2016, you get 30 Bonus Stars every time you buy Nitro Cold Brew. More specifically, the “Nariño 70”. Cold brew is more expensive than regular coffee since it takes longer to brew, thus the “liquid encouragement” of the bonus stars. The bonus stars will appear in your account within 24 hours.

ALSO: A Deal to Help Veteran’s Groups
Speaking of Starbucks, if you want to help a Veteran’s non-profit, in their B&M stores, they have new Veterans themed gift cards. For every card that customers buy and activate (eg load money on it and use it), Starbucks will donate $5 to a Veteran’s non-profit. So instead of reloading your existing card, buy a new card and load it up. Then just add it to your Starbucks account/app, so you can continue earning rewards. You can also transfer its balance to your existing default card, so you don’t have to change your gift card routine/rotation.

November 2, 2016 Filed Under: foods Tagged With: ,

FREE Powerbar for Lucky’s Rewards members

Lucky’s doesn’t get enough credit for its rewards program, one of the few that frequently offers its participating no-strings attached freebies. Which brings us to this week, good until Tuesday 11/8/16, if you are a Lucky’s Rewards member, and if you add the offer to your account (the big ole red button in their emails), you can get a FREE Powerbar (nutrition bar). You just have to use your Lucky Rewards number at checkout. This works at the self-checkout as well as the standard cashier-operated register.

Here’s a screenshot from that email. Check your inbox to find yours (if you are a member):

lucky_rewards_free_powerbar

November 2, 2016 Filed Under: foods Tagged With: , , ,

Kindle First choices for November 2016 are here: Pick One From Six For FREE (Prime Members)

Yes dear calendar aficionados, a new month has arrived! It is November 2016, and with it, among many other things, we have a new set of six pre-release Kindle e-books for Prime members to pick from, as part of their monthly Kindle First benefit. You pick one of the six for FREE and you can start reading it right away. These e-books will be officially released to the general public on December 1st, and then you can buy them rest of them if you like more than one. If you are not a Prime member, you can purchase one of the six right now for $2.

Without further delay, the six choices are…

  • “The Food Of Love” by Amanda Prowse in Family Drama (no, not a Valentine’s cookbook!)
  • “Nirzona (A Love Story)” by Abidah El-Khalieqy, Annie Tucker in Literary Fiction
  • “Ocean of Storms” by Christopher Mari, Jeremy K. Brown in Scifi Thrillers
  • “The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland” by Rebekah Crane in Contemporary Fiction
  • “Walk Into Silence” by Susan McBride in Mysteries
  • “Knight Kyle and the Magic Silver Lance (Adventures Beyond Dragon Mountain)” in Kids books

Since these are pre-release books, they have very few reviews right away, so if none of the authors or subjects or titles scream “pick me now”, you can wait for 1-2 weeks for more people to read them and post reviews, and then use the reviews to make an educated guess on which one to pick. You have until November 30 in 2016 to make a choice, just don’t wait until 11:59pm of that day 🙂

PS: I just realized that abbreviations of some genres totally change their meaning, “Lit fiction” is not quiet the same thing, and “Contempt fiction” is also something totally different 🙂

November 1, 2016 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , , ,