Starbucks changing Reward Redemption options on April 16 – a mixed bag

If you are participating in the Starbucks Rewards program and got used to the standard 125 points redemption for almost any item of your choice. This party will be over on April 16 in 2019 and it will be replaced with a more complicated rewards structure. For some options, this may be better, for others, it’s a stars price hike.

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Peetnik Bonus Points promotion!

If you are a fan of Peet’s Coffee and you are participating in their Peetnik’s Rewards program (or do not object to joining – it’s fairly easy and free to do so), they are running a promotion between April 9-15 in 2018. Make four checkins during the promotional period and get six bonus points. The four checki-ns must be on four separate days, so you must needs visit Peet’s for four of the seven days of the promotional period. Foods and drinks of all price ranges are eligible for the promotion.

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$10 Lucky Gift Card with $50 in select Gift Card purchases

There is a very nice offer running this shopping week (until Tuesday 4/10/18) at Lucky’s brick and mortar stores. For every $50 in select retailer gift cards you purchase, at the checkout register, you will receive a $10 Lucky Gift Card. The maximum you can do is $300 in gift cards which would result in $60 Lucky cards. Not bad because the participating stores are pretty solid this time:

  • Home Depot
  • REI
  • Barnes and Noble
  • Homegoods
  • Regal, Cinemark
  • Fangango

Assuming you’d spend money anyway at any combination of the above retailers, and you also spend money regularly at Lucky’s, it’s like getting a 20% off discount on the purchases made with the purchased gift cards!

Redemption Deal: 2200 SwagBucks for $25 Amazon Gift Card

If you are participating in the SwagBucks rewards program, and you haven’t redeemed a gift card this month yet, there is a promotion running that let’s you redeem 2200 SwagBucks for a $25 Amazon gift card. That’s better than the typical 1:1 ratio!

It’s not just Amazon, other gift cards are also eligible, but not PayPal. Because PayPal is essentially cold hard cash 🙂

Screenshot below:

PSA: Plenti Rewards is slowly melting away!

This is a PSA alert! If you are participating in the Plenti Rewards program, shepherded by American Express, is on a slow steady systematic decline. If you have amassed a sizeable number of Points, it’s a good idea to start planning how to spend them.

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FREE Hershey’s Gold chocolate bar w/Lucky Rewards

You get GOLD! Well, sort of! If you are a Lucky’s Rewards member, logon to your Lucky rewards account before the end of day on Sunday 12/24/17 and look under the offers. One of them is a FREE 1.4 ounce bar of the brand new Hershey’s Gold chocolate bar. Add the offer to your account, and then visit a local Lucky’s store and get it for FREE! You have to get it by the close of business on Sunday 12/24/17.

You have to enter your reward number (phone number typically) or scan your rewards card at checkout, so their computer will recognize the offer and make it a freebie. Note that Sunday is Christmas Even, so depending on when you go and how busy it is, the lines may be long, so keep that in mind if you are planning to go out of your way to go there just for the free chocolate bar 🙂

Peetnik Rewards: Free Bakery Item + Drip Coffee with 1 LB of Coffee at Peet’s B&M

Running in parallel with the $10+ offer is another Peetnik Rewards offer running until 12/31/17 as well for members of the Rewards program. If you make a purchase of one pound of coffee at their brick and mortar stores, you get a free bakery item and a free small drip coffee or tea. The offer is automatically loaded in your Peetnik Rewards program.

Spend 1400+ Plenti Points at Exxon, Get 300 Back

This is a great deal if you have a car! If you refill your car at an Exxon-Mobil gas station and spend at least 1400 Plenti Points ($14 equivalent) to pay for your gas refill, you will earn 300 Plenti points back. You have until 12/31/17 to do this. FIRST though you must activate the offer in your Plenti account using their website or app.

This is an awesome offer, assuming you stay close to a $14 refill, eg $15, it’s like getting 20% back! If you don’t have enough points now, Rite Aid is running a lot of weekly gift card Plenti point promotions, so that’s an easy way to stock up on Plenti points. There are many of 500 Plenti points on $25 gift card offers!

Starbucks for Life return until January 8 in 2018

The annual “Starbucks for Life” promotion is back as every holiday season, running at Starbucks until January 8 in 2018. You have to first manually accept the terms of the offer and connect it to your Starbucks account. This promotion gets you plays and rewards based on your purchases and various challenges you complete (eg, buy X items on Y days).

The big rewards are the “Starbucks for Life” rewards, but that’s only for a few people. More realistically, you can earn rewards and bonus stars. These are more attainable and practical rewards instead 🙂

December 2017: Earn Double Peetnik Reward points on $10+ orders

For the whole calendar month of December in 2017, if you are participating in the Peet’s Rewards program (Peetniks), every time you make a purchase of $10+ (before taxes), you earn double rewards points. You can use this offer as many times as you like during the month. You have to be a member of their Rewards program (obviously) which is free to join.

Strategically, you can now split larger purchases into parts. So instead of buying two pounds of coffee during one visit, buy one pound on two separate visits 🙂

Starbucks B&M (21-27): 60 Bonus Starts on $20+ purchases

At Starbucks brick and mortar stores, between November 21-27 in 2017, if you make a single transaction purchase of $20+, you will receive 60 Bonus Stars. 60 bonus stars are 48% towards a reward. You will also receive the standard bonus stars on the purchase amount (40+ regular stars on a $20+ purchase) so you are almost getting a full reward with this purchase.

Strategically this is a good way to stock up on coffee and tea and gifts and coffee mugs and such. Comparing this with “Double Stars”, purchases of $30+ would benefit from Double Stars over this. For purchases under $30, this offer wins.

Note that the $20 minimum must be reached BEFORE taxes and other mandatory local or federal fees (eg CRV) and tips.

Triple Rewards points on Holiday Baked Goods at Peets

Monday is the day new offers come out for Peet’s Rewards members (aka Peetniks). This week’s offer ends on Thanksgiving (10/23/17) instead of Sunday night. You get three reward points (instead of the usual one) when you make a purchase that includes one of the holiday season bakery items (baked goods). If you are not sure what qualifies, pay attention to the labels and pictures, or *gasp* ask the employees there 🙂

You can use this offer as many times as you like during the promotional period. Regular bakery items are NOT eligible.

Lucky Rewards: FREE Stacey’s Pita Chips

If you are participating in the Lucky’s Rewards program, you have a freebie! The freebie is one bag of Stacey’s pita chips. To get the freebie, these are the steps:

  1. you have to be a member of the Lucky’s Rewards program (free to join)
  2. logon to the Rewards website or the Luckys app
  3. locate the offer and add it your account
  4. go to the Lucky’s store and buy it, making sure you scan your rewards card or type in your phone number
  5. their cash register will deduct the value, making it FREE

The offer expires Sunday night 11/19/17, so don’t delay!

Hot Deal Alert: Load $20 or more in Starbucks App using Chase Pay, Get 300 Bonus Rewards Points

This is a massively epic Starbucks Reward member promotion! This showed up in the Starbucks Android app earlier today while I was in-store. If you load $20 or more using the Starbucks app, and pay for it using Chase Pay, you will receive 300 bonus Starbucks rewards points (stars).

300 stars translate to two full rewards and an extra 50 points (40% towards a reward). If you use the rewards to buy the most expensive items you like, or the largest most loaded drinks they have, you are essentially getting about $20 worth of food and drinks by redeeming the rewards. It becomes a virtual BOGO 🙂

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO GET THE BONUS STARS?

I did not babysit the offer, I was driving around and running errands, but 1.5 hours after the $20+ load with Chase Pay I checked my Starbucks Rewards History and there they were 300 Bonus Points!

There seems to be a bug in their system because the rewards show earlier in the day, maybe they flipped the AM with the PM. You will notice your score skyrocketing and the number of Rewards increasing by 2 or 3. Here’s the screenshot of the notification:

New Starbucks Rewards After 2PM Streak Promotion

A good opportunity to try the new Starbucks Holiday menu is a new after 2pm local time promotion they pushed to customers. As usual, you must first activate the offer on the web or using their app. Once you do, you earn bonus stars depending on how many days you visit in a row after 2pm local time between November 14-20 in 2017. That’s Tuesday AM until Monday PM of next week.

Remember, this particular offer is not number of transactions, but rather number of days in a row you visit. So you have to be there every day to make the most of this. The way the promotion is structured, five days in a row gets you the most bonus bang for your buck.