Archives for May 2017

20% off at Macy’s with Plenti coupon

A new coupon has been unleashed for the Macy’s website, a Memorial day coupon, code SUNNYPLE gets you 20% off. The coupon expires 5/29/17. There are exclusions to the eligibility as usual.

The coupon originated from a Plenti rewards email. Macy’s is one of the major members of the Plenti rewards program, and they have a separate promotion that gets you 10% back in Plenti rewards points. This promotion is not by coupon code, but activate on Plenti, so it should be stackable with the coupon above.

Motorola Moto G (3rd generation; 1GB RAM, 8GB storage) for $50 [Virgin Mobile USA]

In addition to the previously mentioned LG Stylo 2 sale, the official Virgin Mobile USA online store also has a sale on the new condition Motorola Moto G (3rd generation) for $50 with free shipping. That’s it, you own it!

You don’t even have to start service with it, but it will pester you to activate when you reboot it. There are ways to make this less painful [see our post for the LG Stylo 2].

Note also that this is the entry-level of the third-generation Moto G models. Unlike most other smartphones, the entry-level model has half the RAM and half the on-board storage from the more advanced models. So with this one you get 1GB RAM and 8GB on-board storage.

I haven’t used this smartphone, but I have the first generation Moto G, and it’s holding up rather well considering it was a $20 phone when I bought way back then.

LG Stylo 2 (Virgin Mobile) drops to $80

The Virgin Mobile USA official online store has the new condition LG Stylo 2 Android smartphone on sale for $80 with free shipping.

You have no contractual obligation, so you can buy it and use it as a Wifi-only device if you want to. However, every time you reboot it will try to activate. You cannot stop that but you can counter it – see our detailed post on this.

This comes with Marshmallow out of the box, but a Nougat over-the-air update is already available for it. I have this phone, and I will post a review of it as a Marshmallow phone, and once I do that, I will upgrade it to Nougat.

One thing that makes me delay the Nougat update is that Nougat blocks the various Task Managers apps, so it makes it harder to monitor and kill misbehaving apps (if you like to do this sort of thing). This is particularly relevant for this device because LG is almost TouchWiz level of having all kinds of apps you can’t turn off or uninstall.

The phone is versatile compared to many of today’s phones, it has both a microSD and a removable battery. See what’s included in the box in our LG Stylo 2 unboxing post. Fear not, it’s only text and pictures, you won’t be bombarded with annoying videos and slideshows and whiny voices 🙂

As the Stylo in its name suggests, this comes with a built-in Stylus, HOWEVER, this is not the same level of a stylus and stylus integration as the Samsung S-Pen. Then again, the phone sells at a small fraction of the price of a Galaxy Note 🙂

78oz Nutiva Organic Virgin Coconut Oil for $18 w/coupon and S&S

Jump aboard the Coconut Oil hype train with a good deal! The 78oz Nutiva Organic Virgin Coconut Oil container (not glass) is going for $22.59 currently at amazon.com as a “Subscribe and Save” promotion. But on that option, there is also a green 20% off Clip-On coupon. When you click and clip that, it drops the price to around $18.

This makes it roughly $3.70 per pound, which is pretty pretty good for organic and virgin coconut oil! This is cold pressed and unrefined! It is a popular one, it averages 4.7 out of 5 based on over 8500 customer reviews.

You can cancel or adjust the “Subscribe and Save” at any time. The coupon is only available for the “Subscribe and Save” purchase option, not the regular one.

If you are not sure what to look for, here’s a screenshot of the relevant area of the Amazon website:

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Plenti: 10X points at Macy’s (must activate)

A new promotion at the Plenti rewards program offers shoppers 10X points when shopping at Macy’s until 5/29/17. You must first activate this offer, which sounds more complicated than it is, you just press the green Activate button at the Plenti website or through the Plenti emails mentioning the offer.

Macy’s is one of the big partners of Plenti, and a long term “friend” of American Express which is managing the Plenti rewards program.

May 22-29: Starbucks Morning Dash (before 11am local)

The last few Dashes were trying to encourage people to visit their local Starbucks stores after 2pm, but I guess now that the weather is heating up, they want more morning business, because they new promotion that went out by email today wants you to visit before 11am local time.

As usual, you get 50 Bonus Stars if you make six separate transactions before 11am ET during the promotional period, and you get another 50 Bonus Stars if you make eight. Basically once you get to six, you have to get to eight since you get twice as many stars with just two more purchases.

This promotion is running May 22-29 in 2017 (eight days total). You have to first manually activate the promotion by clicking on the appropriate place in the email or the Starbucks app.

$50 Bonus Gift Card with Rachio Smart Sprinkler Controller for $200

It’s a two-in-one bundle! If you buy the Rachio Smart Sprinkler Controller (eight zone, second generation model) for its regular price of $200, for a limited time, Amazon will include in your package a $50 plastic Amazon Gift Card! You don’t have to enter any coupons or do anything else, just add the bundle to the shopping cart and proceed.

This is handy now with Dads and Grads gift giving season, having an extra $50 Gift Card around can be handy in case of “gifting emergencies”. You can buy as many bundles as you like!

I don’t know if this is a daily deal or an on-going offer. It’s hard to tell in the ever-sprawling and out of control Amazon Gold Box these days 🙂

Cordcutter Deal at CVS this week with Gift Cards

If you are a cordcutter, there’s a great deal this week at your local CVS stores! If you buy $50 in plastic gift cards from Netflix or GooglePLAY or Xbox/Microsoft, their cash register will print just for you $10 in Extra Bucks. When you do the math, this is a virtual 20% off discount! Limit one per customer. Offer ends Saturday night when the stores close (5/27/17).

Neither Netflix nor GooglePLAY gift cards get discounted on a regular basis, so this is a great opportunity to score a prepaid discount. Or you can hold on to the gift cards and give them out as gifts in case of emergency ~ Dads and Grads are upon us after all 🙂

Another opportunity: Once you get the $10 Extra Bucks, then you can go for the $20+ in P&G products promotion at CVS. If you spend that much (finding things you need and/or on sale) will get you a new $5 in Extra Bucks. So you can daisy-chain the two offers 🙂

Monday is Starbucks Double Stars Day (YMMV)

I don’t know if every customer gets the same “Double Stars” day, but my email says that Monday May 22nd (2017) is Double Stars day! You don’t have to do anything to activate the Monthly Double Stars offer, it happens automatically. Almost everything you buy counts, except for gift cards and reloads.

With Double Stars, it means you earn a free reward for every $31.25 you spend. Typically $62.50 gets you a free reward. Strategically, double stars days are a good time to make capital purchases (coffee machines, coffee cups, etc) and consumables (coffee beans, tea bags, etc).

Illustrated Game Of Thrones Book #1 (hardcover) for $22

This book had been stubborn at $30, but we finally have some Prime-eligible discounts, it is the new illustrated hardcover edition of Book #1 of “Game Of Thrones” by George R. R. Martin. The current price is around $22 by a marketplace seller, in new condition, that is Prime eligible.

NOTE: Amazon has made a change recently. Before, they (Amazon actual) were the only ones that would get featured for books. Now, they have opened it up, and marketplace sellers can also get the spotlight position for books. This one is one such example. So pay attention to book listings as if they are listings of any other physical good sold at Amazon!

May 21-27: Buy $300+ in VISA Gift Card, Get $20 Staples Gift Card via EasyRebate

This recurring promotion is coming back at Staples brick and mortar stores for the shopping week of May 21-27 in 2017. The terms are as before, if you buy $300 or more in prepaid VISA gift cards (in a single transaction), the cash register will spit out (or email if you have email-only receipts) an EasyRebate offer that will get you a $20 Staples Gift Card after a few weeks. EasyRebates can be submitted online using data from the cash register receipt. You don’t have to mail anything or make any photocopies. Very easy.

As usual, this is profitable if you can get to $300+ with two gift cards (or in very rare cases if you can find one). That’s because each card has an activation fee which eats up your $20 bonus.

This offer is particularly good if you have a credit card that gives you 5% cashback on office supplies, such as some of the Chase Ink cards.

Peets Fridays: Buy One Get One FREE beverage

Peet’s Coffee, now having more funding under the ownership of the European billionaire brothers holding company, has launched a new promotion. Every Friday, between 1 and 3pm local time, they are offering a “Buy One, Get One Beverage FREE” promotion. There is no coupon needed. As with other offers, this applies to handcrafted drinks, not bottled or pre-made drinks.

The promotion starts May 19 (2017). The material in the store (including the little card you see in this post) does not mention an expiration date.

Xfinity Mobile launching for just $12/month for the Per Gigabyte plan or $45/month Unlimited

If you like to pay significantly less than the post-paid plans offered by the Big Four carriers, the XFinity (Comcast) Mobile phone service has launched in select regions today! If you already have an Xfinity internet service (or other post-paid account with them), you can sign up for their service. There are two options:

  • Unlimited plan: $45 per month for 24 months, up to 20GB/month high speed, then slowed down
  • By the Gigabyte: you pay $12 per gigabyte

[Read more…]

Free Pizza is coming to T-Mobile Tuesdays on 5/23/17

Don’t cancel your T-Mobile service just yet! Pizza is coming! According to the teasers for the Tuesday May 23 (2017) freebies (as part of the T-Mobile Tuesdays program), you can get a FREE 1-topping personal pizza at Chuck E. Cheese’s! This is per line, so if you have multiple lines, multiple pizzas (in theory at least; you may want to be discrete about it).

The other freebies are another free ebook from the Book Shout service (which unfortunately can only be read using the Bookshout website or apps, you can’t put it on your Kindle/Kobo/Nook e-readers), and another Shell coupon.

But free pizza is FREE PIZZA 🙂 Hopefully they’ll organize this better than they did the Domino’s promotion during the early days of the Tuesdays rewards program 🙂

Buy 12 months of XBOX LIVE GOLD, Get 3 Months FREE

For a limited time, if you purchase a 12 month XBOX LIVE Gold Membership, you will receive a promo code for a FREE THREE month subscription. This is mentioned as a Bonus Offer on the Amazon product page linked to here.

The offer is only good for the digital purchase, sold by Amazon Digital Services LLC. Purchases of the physical keycard or gift card are NOT eligible.