Buy Three Qualifying Items, Get 150 Bonus Stars (YMMV)

Starbucks Rewards is back with another “must activate” promotion sent to people’s emails. I do not know if everyone receives this offer or not, so YMMV. You have to find the email or the notice in the app to activate it, otherwise you won’t receive any bonus stars.

The offer is simple. You buy three qualifying items, and get 150 Bonus Stars, which are the equivalent of one full reward plus 1/5th of a full reward. Not bad at all assuming you use your Reward for a $6+ item. The three items you have to buy:

  • One “Sausage, Cheddar and Egg Sandwich”
  • One “Bistro Box” (they have 3-4 choices)
  • One “Salad” (they have 3-4 choices as well)

The promotion is running December 28 until the end of day on January 3 in 2017, that’s seven days. The 150 Bonus stars will be added to your account by January 10 in 2017.

The offer is “one time use” per account, meaning you can only earn 150 Bonus Stars regardless of how many times you buy the trio.

25pk Peets Herbal Tea for $1.79 with free S&H

This won’t last long, so don’t sleep on it! A Christmas Day surprise, the Peets website has launched a clearance sale with free shipping (regardless of amount of clearance items) AND an additional discount of up to 50% off with coupon code SALE. That’s right the price is red you see there is BEFORE you enter coupon code SALE in the shopping cart!

This drops the price of their 25pk of herbal teas (Organic Peppermint or Chamomile) to $1.79 each, with free shipping. You can buy as many as you like as long as they have them available. Already, the “Xiao Blend” sold out.

A couple of coffee/tea presses are also part of the sale. The 16oz plastic BPA-Free travel cup drops to under $7 after coupon, and so does the 16oz borosilicate glass. Free shipping even if you buy one of them.

This is a very limited time offer, and these can sell out very quickly, so YMMV!

$25 off orders of $75+ in select Holiday Essentials

If you buy a lot of general use items (grocery, household, wellness and such) from Amazon, this is a superhot deal to end the year. If you spend $75+ on the items shown on those four tab-categories over there, you will get a $25 off discount on your order total. The maximum you can buy for this promotion is up to two units per item, so you’d have to get to $75+ with a variety of products.

Amazon actual has to be the seller, not marketplace sellers. You can find all the eligible products here. Terms and conditions at the bottom of the page. Browser the four sub-tabs (Grocery, Health & Wellness, Household, and Personal Care to find items of interest. Amazon calls these and this promotion “Holiday Essentials”. The offer runs until 12/31/16.

Prime Pantry: Buy 5+ eligible Kelloggs products, get 25% off AND Free Shipping

A couple stackable promotion is currently running at Prime Pantry which is open to Prime members and typically has a $6 flat shipping per “box”. With this promotion, if you buy or more participating Kelloggs items, you will get both a 25% off discount on them AND free shipping. If you have any Prime Pantry “slow shipping credits”, they may be automatically deducted from the total as well.

Running in parallel, there’s another promotion that gets you a free 24oz stainless steel (or aluminum) water bottle with a $60+ Prime Pantry purchase.

Get 150 Bonus Stars with purchase of three specific items (SBUX Rewards)

A new offer went out by email to Starbucks Rewards members. As usual, these may be targeted or rolling out on a staggered basis, so YMMV. This is an offer that you must first manually activate by clicking the button in the email. You get 150 Bonus Stars which is the equivalent of one full reward plus 25 stars, no small change! You have to buy three items to get it, the “Egg and Cheddar” breakfast sandwich (a $3 item), along with Any Salad and Any Bistro Box. You have to buy one of each, but not at the same time. The offer runs December 13-19 in 2016, so you have seven days to buy those three items.

This is a one time use bonus, so even if you buy 100 of each, you will only get 150 bonus stars 🙂

Starbucks Rewards Double Stars This Week in December

I do not know if everyone gets the same “Double Stars” day of the month, but if you are participating in the Starbucks Rewards program, pay attention to your email or your app notifications or inbox for an alert of your upcoming “Double Stars” day. Mine is Monday 12/12/16. Check yours! You don’t have to do anything to activate this, the double stars show up in your account automatically as you make purchases.

PRO TIP: your Double Stars day is a great opportunity to buy the $40 January 2017 cup. This will get you an extra 80 stars, which are about 2/3rds of a full reward.

Load $10+ with VISA Checkout using Starbucks App, Get $10 eGift Card bonus

UPDATE: this arrived quickly – check the bottom of the post for the latest…

The VISA Checkout promotion is back at Starbucks! If you load $10 or more, using the Starbucks Mobile app (not their website) AND pay using VISA Checkout, you will receive a $10 Starbucks e-gift card bonus within 24 hours after the reload transaction goes through. It is important for this offer that you pay with VISA Checkout, not a credit card on file. This promotional period runs between 11/29/16 until the end of day on 12/22/16, so you can only use this promotion ONCE per account.

Screenshots of the critical steps and instructions below, highlighting the important parts:

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[EXPIRED] Lucky Rewards members: Free 10oz LaLlave Espresso tin can (ends 12/13/16)

This weekly freebie ended, but I believe this is the second time they offered this, so it may return at some point in the future…

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Free 24oz Stainless Steel or Aluminum Water Bottle with $60+ Prime Pantry purchase

If you are an Amazon Prime member, you have the option to make purchases at Prime Pantry, Amazon’s attempt at a warehouse-club type of a service. For a limited time, they have a new promotion, if you place a Prime Pantry order of $60+, you get a FREE 24oz Water Bottle. You must add the color of your choice in your shopping cart, together with a qualifying $60+ purchase. There are four colors, three of them are Stainless Steel, one is Aluminum, so you have material choices too.

The price of the water bottle will be adjusted by the shopping cart in the last step before you place your order, so you can confirm you are getting this for free.

You can stack this offer with any PrimePantry “slow shipping” credits you may have in your account, or you can use it in combination with the Buy Five Free Shipping promotion (you buy any combination of five items from that list, and you get free shipping – it could be five different items, or five units of the same item, or any combination in-between).

20% off Subscribe and Save on many RxBar 12-packs

On Mondays, Amazon often has 12-packs of RxBars as Lightning Deals, but if you need more, or your favorite flavors are not participating, there’s another way to get a good deal on them. Currently Amazon is running a 20% off Clip-On coupon on a “Subscribe and Save” (S&S) subscription for the Chocolate Sea Salt flavor.

The price (as of the time of writing) is $24.69 minus the 20% off coupon, you can get the 12-pack for $19.75, which brings it down to around $1.65 per bar, a pretty good price.

Remember though that “Subscribe and Save” is a subscription, so make sure you adjust it according to your needs. The coupon only works on the initial/first purchase, not on subsequent deliveries. The coupon does not work on the “one time purchase”.

The same 20% off clip-on S&S coupon also works on the Coconut Chocolate flavor and the Blueberry flavor and the Maple sea salt along with the Chocolate Mint and finally Peanut Butter.

Because dates are dominating the flavor, I find the Chocolate Sea Salt and the Coffee flavors to be the best, a level above the rest of the flavors. The dates also make some of the other flavors less tasty, eg blueberries. But to each his or her own of course since taste is very personal and subjective 🙂

Having said all that, as of the time of writing (December 8), the best deal is the Blueberry flavor going for $21.73. Minus 20% off drops it to $17.38, which makes it $1.45 per bar.

The prices to meet or beat are $2 per bar if you live near a Trader Joe, which sells them one by one. However, Trader Joe only has a subset of flavors. Alternately, Whole Foods has the individual bars on sale for $2 each every few weeks. Whole Foods seems to have more flavors, but still not the complete line-up.

Dec 9-10: 20% off Holiday Coffees and Teas at Peet’s

For two days only, at participating Peet’s brick and mortar stores, you can get a 20% off discount when you purchase their holiday coffees and teas on Friday December 9 and Saturday December 10 in 2016. Only actual coffees (ground or beans) and teas (loose leaf or bags), along with holiday gift items are eligible. The sale does not include barista-made drinks or pastries or their regular prepared foods or drinks and accessories.

Needless to say, if you like their Holiday Blend coffee or their Winter Solstice or Holiday Blend teas, this is a great opportunity to stock-up and get some gifts too. The Winter Solstice tea is so tasty and fragrant, that alone is a must buy 🙂

An excellent choice is the Winter Solstice tea (flavored black tea), in the characteristic Peets tin, sadly with the Mighty Leaf logos #StillBitter

Buy Two Starbucks $40 Cups, Get $15 e-gift card bonus

Starbucks is running a limited time holiday promotion on their website where if you spend $60+ on eligible items, you will receive a $15 Starbucks e-gift card. They are also running a free shipping promotion. You can use that for many items there, including the January 2017 $40 Cup. One is $40, but if you buy two, you have a total of $80, which gets you both the free shipping, and the $15 e-gift card.

As you can see in the screenshot below, it is excluded from many other promotions, but it is good for the free shipping and the e-gift card offers:

starbucks_40cup_promotion

If you are not familiar with the “January $40 cup”, check out our detailed breakdown post on whether it makes sense to buy it. Spoiler alert: if you plan to buy coffee or tea in January 2017 on 20 (or more) different days, you come out well ahead!

T-Mobile Tuesdays for December 6: Red Robin appetizer, Inkly Greeting Card, Grommet coupon

It’s appetizers and cards and coupons at the T-Mobile Tuesdays for December 6 in 2016. A trio of offers are teased ahead of time, headlined by an appetizer at Red Robin. This is not available for take-out, so you have to stay there, and there is a limit of one appetizer per table. This restrictions could backfire through if everyone shows up and orders an appetizer and water and each member of the party sits at a different table 🙂

tmobile_tuesday_december6

Next up, it’s a free Inkly greeting card, you can scout it ahead of time by checking out their website. Likewise with the “The Grommet” coupon, it’s $12 off your order over there.

So none of the returning champions this week (no Wendy’s, no digital movie).

Buy 4 Breakfast Sandwiches, Get 60 Bonus Stars (Must Activate)

If you are part of the Starbucks Rewards program, check your email or your smartphone notifications or the inbox in the Starbucks app (make sure you have the latest version). There is an offer that gets you 60 Bonus Stars (that’s almost half a reward) if you purchase four breakfast sandwiches between November 30 and December 6, that’s a seven day period. This offer needs to be activated first, so make sure you press the “Join the Dash” button in your email or activate it in the app (if available there).

NOTE: some of these promotions are only offered to a subset of Rewards members. I can only see the ones in my account, and I have no way of knowing whether everybody or only a subset of members get these offers. So YMMV until you check.

The offer is one time use, meaning the maximum you will receive from this is 60 Bonus Stars, even if you buy five or more breakfast sandwiches. The bonus stars will load up in your account by 12/13/16. You can track progress using the latest Starbucks apps (it’s actually pretty nice; I’ll post a screenshot after I put mine to work).

NOTE: if you are not certain what qualifies as a breakfast sandwich, check the menu on their website or in the store or the “Order” section of the app. Some of the sandwiches are too close to call if you are just guessing. You only get the bonus stars if you buy the correct items, even if they are not foodologically (it’s a word now!) categorized accurately 🙂

sbux_breakfast_sandwich_dash

12pk Casa Trail Tea K-Cups for $2 at Grocery Outlet

If you live near a Grocery Outlet and like to drink tea from K-Cups (I hope the tea purists are not reading this post), they currently have 12-packs of Casa Trail K-Cups on sale for $2 per dozen. The flavors include Green, Breakfast (black tea), and the popular Earl Grey (pictured below). I just bought this, I haven’t tried it yet, I’m re-arranging kitchen and the machine that makes K-cups is not within reach).

casa_trail_tea_kcups_groceryoutlet

You can also see in the receipt above, also for $2, you can get a 22-ounce squeeze-bottle of Kraft Olive Oil Mayo. I don’t think I ever tried olive-oil mayo before (or don’t remember doing so), so it should be an interesting curiosity given the price 🙂