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 🙂

Samsung Book Deals choices for December 2016 are up

December is here, and if you have an eligible Samsung device and you are running the Kindle app downloaded from Samsung’s own app store, you can get a free eBook from a choice of four every month, either for a preset period of time or for as long as you own the device. The promotion depends on which device you bought and when you bought it. Samsung changes things every other millisecond 🙂

As usual, all four choices are previously released Kindle Unlimited ebooks, so they have plenty of customer reviews that could help you decide on which out to get. This is different from Kindle First that offers pre-release e-books.

So back to Samsung, these are the four choices:

They are:

  • “Heir’s Grace” by Tim Pratt
  • “The Rose Girls” by Victoria Connelly
  • “Storm Warrior” by Dani Harper
  • “Shadow Hunter” by Michael Prescott

Walgreens has a Make Your Own Black Friday 25% off coupon

While CVS and Rite Aid are fighting tooth and nail with ExtraBucks and Plenti promotions respectively, Walgreens is once again almost sitting out Black Friday, except for one coupon! It is a “Pass” so you can keep bringing it back until Saturday night, and it gets you 25% off all the regular prices items. So this is great if you have favorite items that are rarely discounted. Of course the usual exclusions apply to the coupon (no gift cards, no stamps, etc).

walgreens_25off_regular_prices_bf2016

YMMV eBay Sellers: Get 50% back in Sales (up to $50)

eBay is running a new targeted (I think) promotion to reactivate eBay users who haven’t listed items in recent months/years. This promotion is sent to qualifying customers to their emails and/or eBay Messages (depending on how your communication preferences are setup), and to join in, you have to manually click on the blue “Claim Offer” button in the email, and after you do that, you have to click on the green “Activate Offer” button. Once you do all that, you will get a confirmation message that the offer is active on your account.

ebay_ymmv_seller_promotion

The terms are simple as you can see from the screenshot above, with the important things underlined.

1 Year of Starbucks Gold with a single purchase by May 2

Starbucks continues to ramp up interest and/or curb disappointment in their new Rewards program. One promotion that is running at the moment is that if you are a Rewards member (Green or Gold), and you make a purchase by 5/2/16, you get One Year of Gold membership.

sbux_one_year_of_gold

If you are an existing Gold member, your membership will get extended by one year by 5/15/16. Green members will get upgraded to Gold within 48 hours of making that qualifying purchase. You can only get one 1-year of Gold with this promotion, you won’t get multiple years if you make multiple purchases 🙂

Surveys earn you 10 Stars
The Starbucks Satisfaction Surveys have had their benefits very slightly trimmed too. You now get 10 stars if you do one of those random after-visit customer satisfaction surveys Starbucks occasionally emails you. Ten stars is 8% of a reward. Previously you got one star, which was 1/12th of a Reward, a 8.33%. A small percentage, probably the easiest way for them to “translate” this.

With the old program, 12 surveys was one free reward. With the new program, 12 surveys and a $2.50 purchase get you a free reward. Nitpicking for sure, but we are already irritated by the new Reward program, so this adds insult to injury 🙂

Starbucks Rewards: FREE GOLD if you make a purchase by 5/2/16

It looks like Starbucks was prepared with some damage control measures to counter the disappointment by many regular customers over the new Rewards program that favors big spenders instead of frequent visitors. So the new balm Starbucks is trying is FREE GOLD for everyone 🙂

Well, not actual gold, but Gold membership in their Rewards program. If you are a Green level reward member and you make at least one purchase by 5/2/16, you will get one year of Gold membership status. Your free upgrade will be reflected within 48 hours of purchase.

sbux_free_gold

On the other hand, if you are an existing Gold member, you will get an additional year added to your account. This change will take place after May 2nd, as Gold members are in no danger of losing benefits shortly (unless you happen to fall into this tiny window).

As usual, for all Rewards related purposes, you have to pay using the Starbucks app or a Starbucks gift card that is registered under your Rewards account. This goes without saying for all Rewards-related posts, I don’t want to repeat the whole thing every time 🙂

LG Nexus 5 for $175

The launch of Marshmallow (Android 6.0) changed the depth chart of the Nexus phone line-up. No longer can the trusty Nexus 4 get official OTA Google OS updates with the rest of the pack. So the lines have moved, now the Nexus 5 is the oldest phone that is going to be Marhsmallowed (yes, it’s a verb!). Of course there is (and will be) more work at XDA and other places to get 6.0 on the Nexus 4, but if you prefer the official OTA, it has to be Nexus 5 or newer.

Speaking of which, eBay seller “mobilepros1” (97.9%) is offering new-condition factory-unlocked 16GB LG Nexus 5 (model D820) for $175 with free shipping, with a limit of five per buyer. Only the black color scheme is available. This is a GSM model. No contract!

The warranty is curiously described as “Remaining US Warranty”. Remaining as in? 🙂

A quick refresher, this has 2GB RAM, 16GB on-board, no microSD, 5-inch 1080p display, Snapdragon 800 with Adreno 330, and things like that. Some are reporting battery life improvements with Android 6.0, which is a good thing since battery life was one of the knocks on this one when it came out.

Now strategically the question is, do you get this one or a Nexus 6? Other things equal, the Nexus 6 may get an additional official OS update over the Nexus 5. On the other hand, there’s breaking rumor-news now that Google will merge Android and ChromeOS, so I don’t know if that will throw a monkey-wrench in their OS upgraditis situation.

Free Pilot: ABC’s Fresh Off The Boat

ABC’s brand new “Fresh Off The Boat” sitcom is generating some buzz. If you missed the Wednesday 2/4/15 two episode premiere, fear not. The first episode of the series (aka the pilot) is (for a limited time) FREE to purchase and watch (commercial-free) at Amazon Instant Video and MGo.com and Vudu. As of the time of writing, Google Play does not offer the pilot for free.

The TV series is based on the Fall 2013 memoir by Eddie Huang with the same name, published by Random House, 290 pages long (see amazon.com and other bookstores).