Archives for April 2017

Digital movie for $5: The Handmaid’s Tale

Smartly piggy-backing on the buzz generated by the new TV series on Hulu, an adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”, Amazon Instant Video is offering the 1990 adaptation of the book on sale, in digital HD (without ads) for just $5. This is a digital purchase, not a rental! If you have any slow-shipping credits, they will be automatically applied to your order.

Most TV and cable networks (even HBO) make the pilot episodes of high-profile new TV series available online for FREE everywhere to generate interest and buzz and subsequently produce more subscriptions, but apparently Hulu is not taking that route, they are using the new show as a carrot to get people to sign-up for free trials instead 🙂 That’s where their priorities lie at the moment!

25c 48oz Cold Brew Coffee with qualifying AmazonFresh order

If you place a qualifying order (must meet the minimum purchase amount in your region) at AmazonFresh (this is now a month to month service, $15/month, only Prime members can sign-up for it), you can add to your cart a 48oz Stok Cold Brewed Bottled coffee for just $0.25 more according to this latest limited time AmazonFresh promotion.

I haven’t had this coffee before, so I can’t tell you how good or bad it is. The are two options (stock YMMV depending on zipcode), one of the two is unsweetened.

50% off handmade drinks at Peets again (April 27-30)

For the third week in a row Peet’s Coffee is bringing in a Thursday to Sunday coupon that gets you 50% off all handcrafted (human made; in other words, NOT bottled ones) drinks at your local participating Peets brick and mortar store. This is a great opportunity to try their new line of Honey drinks, there’s a matcha, and a couple of coffee drinks. Get the biggest size too, since half off makes it a nice deal 🙂 Offer runs April 27-30 in 2017. Check fineprint for restrictions.

T-Mobile Tuesdays for 5/2/17 have a Mother’s Day theme

The Tuesday May 2nd (2017) freebies at T-Mobile Tuesdays have a Mother’s Day theme. You start the day with a free Edible Arrangements Pineapple Pop. Then get to your computer and create a free Mother’s Day app using the Inkly app. After that, it’s time to read, a 1-year digital subscription to Fortune magazine (yes, the one whose website has those annoying roadblock ads). Last and decidedly least is a $15 off coupon at VistaPrint (whose offers you can find piling on in your spam folder) 🙂

Trolling aside, this is a pretty good haul, assuming you have an Edible Arrangements facility near you to redeem the freebie 🙂

Starbucks Rewards: 125 Bonus Stars on First B&M Grocery Store Receipt submission

Starbucks is slowly but steadily trying to expand the reach of their Rewards program. And they are trying to encourage people to buy more Starbucks at your local brick and mortar stores with this new promotion running between April 18 and May 13 in 2017. If you purchase Starbucks K-Cup pods at B&M Grocery stores, and submit a picture of your receipt, you will receive 125 Bonus Stars, which are the equivalent of a FREE FULL REWARD.

Given that you can redeem your reward for the most expensive items at Starbucks stores, or a 1oz of expensive Teavana tea at Teavana stores, if you can find the Starbucks K-Cup pods at a good deal at your local B&M grocery store, this is not a bad deal!

I haven’t done this promotion yet, so I don’t know exactly how it works. If/when I do this, I will post more about it 🙂 For all the details, check the Starbucks Stars website with handy FAQs explaining it all.

T-Mobile Tuesdays for 4/25/17 is Music and Gas

I suppose T-Mobile Tuesday are celebrating in a tape-delayed fashion National Record Store Day with the 4/25/17 freebies, because it’s music and gas to get you there 😉 There is one legit freebie, two coupons, and one unspecified item.

The freebie is a 12 week subscription to Billboard (this is a digital subscription, not a physical magazine). The coupons are the usual 25c off per gallon at participating Shell stations, and 25% off JBL products available for purchase at T-Mobile real-world stores.

The unspecified item is a music playlist. It does not say whether it will be streamable or a digital download. We’ll find out on Tuesday 🙂

[DEAD] 12pk RXBar (Mint Chocolate) for $20

This promotion expired…

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April 21-23: 50 Bonus Stars on Frap & Baked (SBUX Rewards)

This is a new shorter bonus stars promotion from Starbucks, it runs for three days only, but it is simple to do in a single visit. It is YMMV and you have to manually Activate the offer before you earn the bonus.

The offer is this, between April 21-23 (those two days included), if you purchase TOGETHER (in the same transaction) any frappuccino and any baked good item, you will earn 50 bonus stars ~ in addition to the regular stars on the purchase amount. This is 40% of the value of a full reward (125 stars).

If you are a fan of this product combo, you are in luck! Once activated, you can get the 50 Bonus as many times as you like during this promotion. Just monitor your sugar levels because both fraps and bakery goods are loaded 🙂

PS: This may also be a good opportunity/excuse to try the new Unicorn Frappuccino just for LOLz sake 🙂

13.3-inch HP ENVY 13-ab016nr for $620 (SSD, Win10)

Unless you need to store a lot of data on the on-board hard drive, or need a high-powered CPU, SSDs are the way to go with laptops these days, and if so, Amazon has a nice sale on the HP ENVY 13-ab016nr for $620 with free shipping. HP needs to work on their product naming schemes. No one is going to be standing on a street corner singing the praises of a “ab016nr” 🙂

It is powered by the i5-7200U dual core, a seventh generation Core model, which currently ranks #602 at cpubenchmark.net, so if you need to have a lot of processing or more cores, this is not it for you. Of course the rankings are relative, and as more new CPUs come out, older ones drop. For example, AMD’s Ryzen line-up pushed almost everyone down seven spots, five of the seven Ryzens are in the Top 100 already. I should also point out, that unlike the Billboard Music Charts, the only way for CPUs to go in this chart is down, since there’s always newer and faster models. No one can climb. The best they can hope for is to stay put 🙂

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50% off Peets Beverages in-store with coupon

Spring is in the air and the coffee shop wars are heating up! Peet’s Coffee stores have launched a new coupon promotion, you get 50% off their barista-prepared beverages by showing the coupon above or even mentioning it. You don’t have to print it ~ save the planet 🙂 The coupon runs April 20-23 in 2017, which is Thursday until the close of business on Saturday. This is a good opportunity to try their new trio of honey-themed coffee beverages which are in the $5 territory without the coupons!

Plenti Rewards: 10X at Macy’s

If you are participating in the Plenti Rewards program (administrated by none other than American Express), and you are fond of shopping at Macy’s, a new offer running there offers you 10X in Plenti points for purchases made at Macy’s. Once you activate the offer (hit the green button in the email or their website or app), you will begin earning the bonus points. This offer expires April 23 (2017), but they have new Macy’s offers every few days…

40% off first order at Swap with coupon

Good until the end of April 2017, if you have NEVER shopped at Swap.com before, you can use coupon code 1STTIMESWAP40 to get 40% off your purchase at the Swap.com website. As usual, some exclusions and limitations apply. Swap offers very reasonably priced clothing items and accessories in USED condition. Thus the name Swap 🙂 A good way to both save your wallet and save the planet by reusing before recycling or buying new.

Prime members: you may get a $3 Happy Belly Reward if you select Slow Shipping

If you are a Prime member, and you make a qualifying purchase at Amazon (it has to be shipped from Amazon’s facilities as a minimum), you may be offered a $3 Happy Belly store credit if you select Slow Shipping instead of the Prime 2-day shipping. The official term for this is “No Rush Shipping” which is more accurate since sometimes things arrive fast anyway (it depends on many factors including availability of product nearby and other orders you may have coming).

You are presented with this offer in the shopping cart, so if you have 1-Click shipping, you may not notice it. It looks like this (screenshot below):

What is Happy Belly you ask? It is a relatively new line of Amazon house-brand products that, as the goofy name suggests, are food items. These include various nuts, coffee, spices, trail mixes, and …eggs (I’m sure Amazon does not have live chickens in its warehouses). The prices are typically competitive for no-nonsense basic quality products.

In typical (frustrating) Amazon fashion, different flavors/options are available in a combination of regular Amazon.com, and/or Prime Pantry and/or Amazon FRESH. YMMV on each item depending on when you check and where you live.

YMMV 10% back statement credit on AT&T Universal Credit Card

This is a YMMV promotion as it may be targeted. I haven’t been using my AT&T Universal Credit Card (by Citibank) much lately, so maybe that’s why their computer sent me this offer. If you are offered this, AND manually activate it (click on the link in their emails), you will get 10% back as a Statement Credit (not those dinky Thank You points) almost everywhere you use the card. This is not restricted to specific product pages.

The downside though is that this is a maximum $25 statement credit through this promotion, which means the maximum spending with the bonus earnings is just over $250. They only count the difference between your standard rewards and the bonus towards the $25, so if a purchase is eligible for 1%, only the 9% earned will count towards the $25. So it’s about $275~ or so. I can’t do the math in my head this early in the day 🙂

You have until May 31st in 2017 to activate this promotion [if you had been offered it]…

AMEX Offers: Spend $250+ at Hugo BOSS, Get $50 Statement Credit

If you are a fan of the Hugo Boss brand (and stores), check your AMEX offers to see if you have been offered this promotion. You login to your account, and below the account summary, the various AMEX offers are presented in an ever-scrolling fashion. One of them is this, screenshot of which below:

If you spend $250 or more, in a combination of purchases at their website and brick and mortar stores, you will receive a $50 statement credit on your AMEX account. One use per customer. The offer runs until 5/11/17. You must first claim it (“Add to Card”) before you can earn the bonus.

It appears to be offered on both AMEX Blue and Membership Rewards cards. YMMV as always with the AMEX offers.