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For the week of April 5-11 in 2015, at Staples brick and mortar stores, if you purchase $200 or more in Nordstrom Gift Card, you can receive a $15 prepaid VISA gift card by mail after submitting an Easy Rebate. The Easy Rebates are submitted online, so you don’t have to mail anything or cut bar codes and such. Since store gift cards don’t have activate fees, it’s essentially a $15 profit for you.
PS: the prepaid VISA, Mastercard and American Express gift cards do have activation fees.
The last couple of months the Kindle First program spoiled us by offering two free ebooks instead of the usual one, but for the April 2015 offerings, we are back to picking one of the four available options. As usual, these are pre-release books that will be e-published the following month (May 1st), but Prime members can get one of the four for free, and start reading it immediately. The offers are running April 1-30 in 2015, and will be replaced on the first of every month.
Without further ado, this month’s Kindle First choices are:
If more than one of them sounds appealing, wait until May 1st to purchase them or if they are part of Kindle Unlimited or Prime, borrow them for free.
This is a targeted offer, for some members of the American Express Prepaid cards. If you upgrade to their new Serve reloadable card, you will earn 10c for each transaction you make until 5/31/15. Check your emails to see if you have received this offer if you are a Prepaid user. A lot of people joined in a couple of years ago when AMEX was giving people $10 bonuses with a $50+ account. Do note however that the new Serve card has a $1 monthly fee unless you set up monthly direct deposit or load $500+ per month on the card. So keep that in mind!
Here is the promotion from the email:
If you are part of the Starbucks Rewards program, there’s a number of Bonus Stars promotion running in the next few days. You can use the Starbucks app or a registered plastic gift card linked to your account. You don’t have to manually opt-in for any of these offers, they happen automatically.
Not exciting about March Madness? Have Uverse service? You have an extra channel to watch during the March 26-29 (2015) weekend. There is a free preview of the EPIX and Starz movie channels. This happens automatically, there’s nothing you need to do – just locate the EPIX and Starz channels on your line-up. Starz includes various Encore movie channels as well. Just browse the on-screen Guide and see which channels have a live feed (versus the usual subscription blue-screen). If you have a DVR, you can fill it up with movies to watch later on 🙂
Starz is also celebrating the return of Outlander next week, the second half of the first season.
The Target Weekly Circular Ad, expiring at the end of day on 3/28/15, has a coupon promotion. Using the coupon, when you make a purchase of $125 or more on eligible Baby products (babies not included!), you will receive a $20 Target gift card. You can also use this offer online by using promo code SAVE20. Only one offer per customer during this promotion.
If you are planning to make an Amazon purchase of $25 or more, you can purchase a 12pk BIC Round Stic Xtra Life Ball Pens, medium point (1.0mm), black ink, for just 88 cents (that’s $0.88 per 12 pens). You can buy as many 12pks as you like at this price!
For the shopping week of March 15 to 21 (2015), at Staples brick and mortar stores (not their website), per their weekly ad, if you spend $250 or more in VISA Gift Card, you will receive a $20 VISA Gift Card by mail after you submit an Easy Rebate. Since VISA gift cards have an activation fee, this offer makes sense if you are able to find a combination of gift cards with activation fees under $20. The promotion is one per customer during this weekly promotional period. Check store or ad for more details.
If you have a Chase Freedom credit card with the rotating 5% reward categories, mark your calendars and your ToDo lists. You can sign up for the 2nd Quarter promotions starting on Sunday 3/15/15. The new categories go live on 4/1/15 until 6/30/15, and they are very nice as well, they cover Restaurants, Bed Bath and Beyond, Overstock.com and H&M. The usual limits apply, you earn 5% on up to $1500 in purchases, so the maximum rewards is going to be $75. For purchases over $1500 in these categories during the quarter, you will earn the usual 1%.
Here’s a screenshot of the reminder:
It’s Tea Time again, especially if you are planning to place an order of $25 or more from Amazon (regardless of Prime status). The 3.5 oz Twinings Prince Of Wales Loose Leaf Tea in a Tin Can is on sale for just under $5 per tin. You can buy as many as you like, so you can get to the $25+ limit with six tins of this.
It is also available through the Subscribe and Save program, for an additional 5% to 15% discount (higher discount if you have five or more items arriving during the same month with Subscribe and Save).
This tea is doing well in customer reviews over there, it averages 4.6 out of 5 based on 29 of them. This is 100g of tea, which is roughly 3.53 oz.
A brand new TV series, The Returned, that premiered on A&E on Monday 3/9/15 is offering, for a limited time only, the pilot episode for FREE, in HD, and without commercials at Amazon Instant Video. Please note this will be free only for a few days after it premieres. After that, it will sell just like any other online episode ($2 SD, $3 HD).
Points of Confusion
It is March 2015 and this means, among many other things, it is time to sign up for the Discover Q2 5% Rewards! The promotion runs April 1st until June 30th (the usual three months, per calendar quarter), but sign up begins one month before the offer goes live. And the Q2 offers are really good, Restaurants and Movies!
The usual terms apply, up to $1500 in purchases per credit card earn 5% reward, with a maximum bonus for the quarter of $75 in rewards. The fineprint of the promotion describes the eligible places as follows:
If you like to shop at Peet’s Coffee stores or at their website, and you happen to be a Costco member, you can get a great deal, you pay $80 and receive $100 in Peet’s Gift Cards (five $20 gift cards). Free shipping.
If you are not a Costco member, you can still purchase them for the same price from the Costco website! UPDATE: there is NO non-member surcharge for these, you also pay $80 with free shipping!!!
This is an even better deal now. The Peets reload offer now is $1 off your drink purchase with a $20+ gift card purchase or reload. Previously (see the paragraph below) you get a free medium drink of your choice with a $25 reload. So after this development, the Costco deal becomes even better! On $100 spend, you pay $80 with the Costco gift cards versus $96 with the Peets reload discounts.
This promotion expired, see previous paragraph for the current situation. This is a great deal, since you have more flexibility. Without this offer, you get a free medium drink of your choice every time you load/reload $25 or more on a Peet’s gift card. Unless you use the free drink to get a very complicated drink (multiple syrups and extras), you are still better off with the Costco offer. Plus you don’t have to decide to get a more expensive drink at a reload – you can get it any time you like. Or maybe you don’t like those milky drinks and you mostly buy coffee or tea or beans.
It is March 1st, and this means, among many other things, a new selection of Kindle First ebooks. If you are a Prime member, you can select two of the four choices for free, and read them right now! Everybody else has to wait until April 1st before they can buy them. March brings us a diverse selection of genres, as follows:
You can find the monthly choices with more details, reviews, and excerpts (where available) at the Kindle First page. Happy reading!
PS: if you are not a Prime member, you can purchase up to two of these for $2 per e-book.
I don’t know if this is happening in every Whole Foods store or not, but in some stores, they have a new spinning wheel promotion to encourage customers to donate to the Whole Foods charities. You donate $1, and you get to spin a wheel to win prizes. Everyone is guaranteed to win something. The prizes may change. Since most items at Whole Foods are over $1, the chances are you are going to get a better value for your $1, and at the same time, donate to a good cause. And I’m sure Whole Foods is taking the tax deduction for the prizes and of course the donations for their non-profit. So everybody wins!
I don’t know how long this will last or how many stores have it, so there is a big YMMV element since I obviously can’t check every single WF store 🙂
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