Direct TV NOW offer: First Three Months for $10/mo on the Entry-level Plan

If you want to do a more long-term experiment to see if cordcutting is right for you, for a limited time, the Direct TV NOW streaming service (no satellite needed) is offering a promotion that gets you three months of their entry-level $35/month plan for $10 per month when you enter coupon code YESNOW3 in the shopping cart.

This offer jumped up while I was surfing around their website. They don’t have a good DVR service like YouTube TV but DirectTV lets you add HBO for just $5 per month, and with Westworld Season 2 coming up, this combination may not be a bad idea!

Cordcutter Savings: $5 Rite Aid Rewards with $25 Netflix Gift Card

Cordcutters! Did you know you can save on your Netflix monthly fees? You can’t get a direct discount from Netflix, BUT you can buy Netflix gift cards at a discount, and apply them to your own Netflix account. Thus getting an indirect discount!

Which brings us to Rite aid brick and mortar stores. Good until Saturday at the close of business (that’s January 27 in 2018), you can buy a $25 Netflix plastic gift card, and receive $5 back in Rite Aid rewards (which you can begin spending the next morning at Rite Aid). This roundabout promotion is a 20% savings, assuming you’ll have no problem finding things to buy at Rite Aid.

The promotion is limit two per customer for this week, so $50 in Netflix should keep your account running for about 4.5 months if you have the default Netflix plan.

If you don’t want Netflix, fear not! Other retailers are also participating in this promotion, as you can see in the pictures above and below:

Note that the GAP and Best Buy offers are $8 Rewards BUT with the purchase of $50 gift cards, not $25 gift cards. The rest of the retailers (Bass, Cabellas, Dominos, Xbox, etc) participate in the $5 rewards for $25 gift card promotion.

Connect Two Services to Movies Anywhere, Get FIVE FREE MOVIES

A new movie library syncing and playback service expanded out of Disney’s Movies Anywhere. It’s the new Movies Anywhere service that includes Disney along with four other major studios (Sony, WB, 20th Century, Universal).

Movies purchased on Vudu, iTunes, Google Play and Amazon Instant Video, or Digital Copy or Ultraviolet movies redeemed through those services, from those participating studios, are now able to get synced across those services and also into the Movies Anywhere app/service. (which can also play those movies by the way – unlike that darned Ultraviolet mess).

We have for you a step by step guide, with some screenshots too, on how to setup and connect Movies Anywhere. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment here or there.

For a limited time, in an attempt to encourage more people to sign up for the service, Movies Anywhere is offering up to five free movies if you connect one or two services to it.

[Read more…]

Free 1-Month Trial of Xfinity Instant TV for existing customers

Comcast (Xfinity) has been taking the challenge from cable-alternatives more seriously lately. They launched their own Xfinity Mobile cellphone service, and now they are going after the various cordcutter streaming services like SlingTV and YouTube TV with their own service, “Xfinity Instant TV”.

Just like their mobile service, they are targeting it towards their own existing customers, for example internet-only Xfinity customers who don’t want to sign up for their evil Triple Play money traps 🙂

If you are an existing Xfinity customer, check your Xfinity emails (yes, you have an email account with them – it’s your account you use to login), you may find an offer for a free 1-month free trial, and then $19/month. Of course this is a very skinny bundle, they are very stingy with their channels 🙂

I am planning to try out most if not all of the various streaming services in the next few months. I’m waiting for them to improve their DVR offerings (except for YouTube TV everybody else is a disaster) or make Roku apps available and things like that.

20% off CBS All Access Subscription for 3 months

If you are ready to jump on the all new “Star Trek Discovery” bandwagon, and you missed out previous opportunities for a 2-week or better free trial on the “with commercials” plan, we have some alternatives for you!

Currently most options, such as Web Browser sign-up, Roku and Android (Google Play) only offer a 1-week free trial on the Limited Commercials plan ($6/month), and no free trial on the $10/month plan which has fewer commercials than the Limited Commercials plan, but it’s not ad-free like Netflix. Yeah, live to the Old Media to find a way to twist “no ads” into meaning “fewer ads”. Bastards!

GOOGLE PLAY

One option for a discount is to sign up through Google Play using discounted Google Play gift cards. Pay for the subscription using your gift card balance, not a credit card. So the discount you find on the gift cards, is the effective discount you would get on the CBS All Access monthly subscription.

APPLE TV

If you have an Apple TV, some people are reporting that they are offered a 30-day free trial through that. I don’t have an Apple TV to verify that.

WEB BROWSER COUPON DISCOUNT

Another option if you are signing up with a web browser is to use coupon code FALLACCESS which is a 20% off discount during your first three months of service.

Sadly the coupon does not work on Google Play ~ which would have been an opportunity to stack the discounts.

PREPAID DISCOUNTED ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION

If you are totally sold on the CBS All Access concept they also sell prepaid annual plans with a built-in discount. Keep in mind however that they only have three original shows:

  • Star Trek Discovery and its Talk Show
  • The Good Fight (Good Wife spin-off)
  • Big Brother extras
  • that’s it, nothing else exclusive

They have a lot of CBS content, and offer additional ways to watch that CBS content. So if you are a fan of CBS TV in general, or some of their older TV shows (they have a library of many things), along with a handful of movies (“Defiance” perhaps the most recognizable).

Buy Two Google Play Gift Cards, Get $5 Walgreens Gift Card

Good until Saturday night 7/22/17, at your local Walgreens brick and mortar stores, you can get a free $5 Walgreens gift card, if you purchase any two Google Play, or NIKE or Spa Week gift cards. This is promising because there are $10 Google Play gift cards, so you can pay $20 (two $10 gift cards) and get a $5 Walgreens gift card.

Assuming you have no problem spending the Walgreens gift card, that’s a $5 return on a $20 investment, a 25% return or virtual discount, however you want to account for it! You need to be a Walgreens rewards member, which is free to join.

I don’t know how many of these you can do during this week. I haven’t done this yet, but I’m planning to do this (unless I forget).

[Read more…]

How to get a discount on an HBO Now Subscription

For cordcutters, HBO has a rather generous 30-day free trial, but once they hook you in, then their monthly fee is $15, which for some may be too much, especially if you don’t watch every show and high profile movie they offer there. So, is there a way to get a discount for that?

The answer is YES, but it is an indirect way of getting a discount. You sign-up and pay for your subscription through GooglePLAY. Why GooglePLAY? Because they allow you to pay for monthly subscriptions with your gift card balance. You don’t have to pay with a credit card or debit card.

[Read more…]

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 🙂

AMEX Offers: Spend $15+, Get $5 statement credit

The battles for cordcutters are heating up as more and more companies are offering LIVE TV plans now. Once upon a time, this was thought of as unthinkable. Now it’s raining options. One of the options, one of the first in the game, is SlingTV, having the lowest entry price for a basic plan ($20/month). And they are participating in the American Express offers…

If you spend $15+ on SlingTV, paid with your AMEX card of course, you will receive a one time $5 statement credit. So to get this offer, all you need to do is paying for a month of the service. As usual, you have to first activate the offer by adding it to your card (see screenshot above). And needless to say, the AMEX Offers website must needs offer this option to you, because some of this offers are targeted or YMMV or limited activation quantity.

Amazon offers 5-month installment plan on FireTV (YMMV)

With more and more companies entering the fray of internet TV (YouTubeTV is now live in five major cities, Hulu is next, Apple is pondering), streaming boxes become more and more valuable, and unlike the dreaded cable boxes that are typically old, slow and you pay for them monthly anyway even if you don’t own them, they are yours.

And if you want to spread the payments over, Amazon is offering (to some customers, YMMV, I don’t know if everyone sees this) a zero-interest five-month installment plan. They take the price of the Fire TV which is currently $90, they divide it by five, and they charge your credit card that amount ($18) every month for the next five months.

If their computer offers this to you, you will see something like this on the product page (this with a desktop web browser):

Free Chromecast after you pay for 1-month of YouTube TV

Cordcutter deal alert! If you live in one of the five regions that are the first to launch the new YouTube TV streaming service, you are in luck! Google is not only running a 30-day free trial, but if you stick around after the free trial and pay for one month ($35 per month), you will receive a free Chromecast device. Given the price of the Chromecast, this is almost like getting two months for free!

One sore point however is that you don’t have as much flexibility when watching on an actual television. You have to use a Chromecast or Android TV. There is no support for the wonderful Roku boxes or Apple TV or gaming platforms (XBox or PS4). I don’t know if they have plans to expand there or not.

Having to use Chromecast (the hardware device) can be annoying because it takes up one HDMI sport AND it needed to be powered, so you either have to use a USB port on your TV or attach it to wall AC to USB power, or rotate portable power bricks (like the ones that power smartphones) to keep feeding it.

I want a Roku app 🙂

Other than that, this is the best streaming service in terms of features. You get unlimited cloud DVR (that lasts up to nine months per recording), something none of the other services offer. You can link up to six Google accounts to one $35/month subscription. Three of those six subscriptions can watch live shows in parallel. That’s three live streams.

There’s plenty of sports channels of the ESPN, Fox and Comcast variety, however, the deal killer for some NBA and baseball fans is that the Turner networks are NOT part of the package at the moment.

NOTE: $35 per month is if you sign up with a computer or using Android devices. If you sign up through iTunes, Google passes YOU the “Apple tax”, you pay $40 per month instead.

20% off back in Plenti points with $25 Netflix Gift Card

Cordcutters, unite and take over! For the shopping week of Sunday February 12 until the close of business on Saturday February 18 (2017), at Rite Aid brick and mortar stores, you get 20% back in Plenti points when you purchase a $25 prepaid Netflix gift card. That’s 500 points, which have $5 buying power in future purchases at Rite Aid and other participating Plenti merchants. The promotion is limit two for the shopping week (as usual).

Given that Netflix is rarely discounted, this is pretty, pretty, pretty good! Plenti is free to join, and you can always spend your points on Exxon-Mobil gas if you don’t need anything else from the other participating merchants.

Just remember that Plenti points don’t roll, so don’t use points to buy items that qualify for new Plenti points. Use them on everything else 🙂

Nov 6-12: buy $20 Netflix Gift Card, get 400 Plenti Points (limit 2)

Good news Netflix users! In addition to the Black Friday Plenti offer, Rite Aid is offering another Netflix gift card offer for the week of November 6-12 in 2016 at their brick and mortar stores. The amounts are different for this offer, buy a $20 Netflix gift card and get 400 Plenti points to use in the future. That’s a 20% virtual discount. The promotion is limit two per customer for the week. Typically they carry the $15-to-$100 Netflix gift cards, so you have to tell the cashier that you want $20 loaded on your gift card.

PS: 400 Plenti points have the buying power of $4 at Rite Aid, Macy’s, Exxon-Mobil and other participating places. I’ve been doing these gift card Plenti offers for a few months now, and they do work as expected. Just make sure you get the right amounts and during the correct week 🙂

Cordcutter Alert: Netflix Gift Cards at Rite Aid during Black Friday (effective 20% off discount)

Netflix prices have gone up, but Black Friday comes to the rescue! If you participate in the Plenti Rewards program (or do not object to joining, it’s free – [see introduction], and have Rite Aid B&M stores near you, you can get a nice deal on prepaid Netflix gift cards. You buy a $50 Netflix Gift Card, and receive 800 Plenti points which are the spending equivalent of $8 towards a future purchase. Assuming you can spend the Plenti points (Rite Aid, Macy’s, Exxon-Mobil, etc), you are getting a virtual 20% off discount on the Netflix prices that are paid with the gift card.

Better yet, this promotion is limit 2 for the promotional period (Thursday to Saturday during Black Friday 2016 week). Rite Aid stores typically are out of the way of major shopping areas, so you are not going to fight mall traffic for these 🙂 $100 in Netflix gift cards is, assuming you are on the $10/month plan, ten months of Netflix!

PS: YES, you can add this to your own account, you don’t have to “gift it” to another person!

Hulu with Ads for $6 per month (for 1-year) [NEW CUSTOMERS]

If you don’t mind seeing TV Ads, the Hulu with Ads plan (they call it “Limited Commercials” in such a lovely Orwellian fashion) is having a new promotion, if you are a NEW CUSTOMER, you can get it for $6 per month for the first 12 months, instead of the usual $8 per month. After the first 12 months, you go to $8 per month (or whatever the price will be at that time). There is no parallel promotion for the Ad-Free plan which continues for $12 per month.

My suspicion is that because they sell ads, they are trying to triangulate paying subscribers vs Page Views, and by lowering the monthly price, they can get more people to sign-up, so they’ll have more page views, and sell more ads. That’s why the no-ads plan is not discounted because they can’t offset ads vs subscription.

Regardless, you can cancel any time. The 12 months are just the price guarantee, you don’t have to remain a paying customer for 12 months.