We are hitting two ecosystems with one blog stone 🙂 Good until Saturday night 4/15/17, at Rite Aid brick and mortar stores [check their Weekly Ad to verify your local stores are participating], by using the Plenti Rewards program (managed by American Express and free and easy to join in-store or online), you can get 20% back in Plenti points on the purchase of $30 Google Play or $30 iTunes Gift Cards. You earn the $6 spending equivalent (600 Plenti Points) to use in the future (as early as next day after purchase) at participating Plenti retailers (Rite Aid, Exxon-Mobil, Macy’s, etc). If you shop at any of these retailers regularly, this is as good as cash. I’ve done these a few times, they work like clockwork. Limit two per customer for this particular offer.

Of camera and photo interest is the purchase of photography and camera guide e-books (tablets and PCs are better suited than e-book readers and phones when reading e-books with diagrams, tables, and of course color pictures), along with the purchase of camera and photography apps, and the occasional photography-related movie or TV show.

Speaking of which, another similar deal is running at Rite Aid B&M for the same time period. Buy a $50 Netflix Gift card, and get 800 Plenti points back. That’s a 16% off virtual discount, assuming you have no problem spending the 800 Plenti points at participating retailers. Limit two per customer on this offer. You can load this card to your own Netflix account (you don’t have to gift it to someone else). These work like clockwork too, and it only takes about 60 seconds to scratch the code, logon to the Netflix website, and type in the goofy jumble of letters and numbers that is the gift card code. Netflix can sometimes take a couple of minutes to “digest” the gift card, so don’t panic if your balance does not refresh instantaneously [this word is a pain to type correctly!]

Of camera and photo interest, well, there are very few photo-related movies and docs on Netflix, but you can put the savings towards the purchase of your next camera and photo item 🙂 A 16% virtual discount on a $10 monthly plan would make it a virtual $8.40 per month. Assuming you can use the Plenti points on your everyday purchases.

I have done the above offers multiple times, they work like clockwork, and they are frictionless. All you have to do is show your Plenti rewards card when making the purchase at Rite Aid, or type in your phone number correctly. You pay full price at the cash register. You get the promotion in bonus points. You get instant verification on the bonus points on the cash register receipt, it shows the amount earned. The bonus points can be spend the next morning (after your purchase). You cannot roll the points (you cannot use them on gift cards anyway), so you must pay with “new money” (credit card, cash, debit card, check, gold bullion bars, live chickens, and all the other acceptable payment methods).

Amazon has another gift card promotion, but this is YMMV. Typically these type of offers are once for the lifetime of an Amazon account, and they may be further targeted to a subset of customers based on whatever criteria their computers use (eg inactive customers, or customers who rarely buy gift cards, etc – who knows). You can tell if you are eligible for this offer if you are logged on to your Amazon account and visit the Promotional page. IF you are not eligible, the page will inform you so like this:

It is almost too late to buy physical gifts, you either have to fight last minute stressed out crowds at shopping centers, or hope PrimeNOW doesn’t screw up with a last minute order (Amazon delivery drivers on average are not as seasoned as UPS and FedEx drivers). At this point in time, the safer and least stressful solution is online gift cards delivered by email or printable with your own printer.

At Amazon’s Gift Cards, you can send them by e-mail (they usually arrive within a couple of minutes), or you can print them with your own printer (they offer a variety of designs including uploading your own photo, which would make it a personal gift), and for the younger generation, they even have delivery via a text message (because email and reading from paper is hard!). You can enter any amount from $1 to $2000. If you want to test the delivery speed, you can send yourself an email gift card and see how fast it arrives. You can even send it to the same email address. You can also select the delivery date (but not the delivery time). Amazon sends you emails after it is sent and after the email with the gift card is opened (or something like that, I forgot what’s the exact trigger point), so you’ll know it was not lost in the cybersphere.

At B&H Photo, you can send them via e-mail with a few premade templates to chose from. Amounts range from $20 to $250. For larger amounts, send multiple cards. TIP: if sending multiple e-gift cards to the same person, maybe send different amounts so they don’t get confused and think it’s a duplicate 🙂

At Adorama, you have preset options ranging from $10 to $1000, delivered by e-mail.

If you like to gift gift-cards but prefer to gift physical tangible gift cards, there are still a number of options available at Amazon with free 1-day shipping for all (they do that often for gift cards since they are featherweight).

Prime members have more options on free 1-day shipping or next-day delivery. However, some of these gift cards also offer free 1-day for non-Prime members. Regardless, the best way to tell for sure is to add the items of interest to your shopping cart and see what shipping fees and options the shopping cart shows you. It is the ultimate decider after all 🙂

+ Snow Flake Tin ($25 to $2000)
+ Holiday Teddy Bear ($200 or $250)
+ Merry Christmas Tin ($50 to $1000; preset amounts only)
+ Smiling Santa Tin ($50 to $200; preset amounts only)
+ Plaid Box with either Nativity Scene or Snow Globe option ($50 to $1000)
+ classic-looking Brown & Blue Tin ($25 to $2000)
+ Minimalist hippie/hipster Mini Amazon Shipping Cardboard ($50 to $2000)
+ Santa Tin [CAUTION: it says “Ho!” on the gift card which may be misinterpreted by prickly recipients!]
+ over 120 options available, some are tins, some are greeting cards, some are alternative approaches/designs (eg book bookmarks
+ some gift cards have preset amounts or you can enter an amount in the “Other” box up to $2000, others only have preset amounts
+ these are the Christmas Delivery Cut-Off Dates but the Shopping Cart estimate is the most accurate for each particular order at each particular point in time

The above are Amazon’s own gift cards, but they now also offer gift cards for other retailers, some of which are eligible for free 1-day shipping. Check the full list here (includes Whole Foods, Netflix, Starbucks, various restaurants and clothing stores, Spotify, etc)

TIP: if you are not going to be around to physically receive the gift cards, you also have the option to send them to a local Amazon Locker facility (eg 711, Safeway, etc – availability varies by region and zipcode).

As of a 12/19/16 late PM re-check, this offer is not available for purchase. I do not know if it is temporarily gone or forever…

[Read more…]

They are back again, the Teddy Bear Amazon Gift Cards are now available in $150 or $200 or $250 denominations Amazon by Amazon itself. You get a free gift of the same value plus the holiday teddy bear included for free. They come with free 1-day delivery, or you can select a slower shipping method (“digital credits” may or may not be available, I’m not sure exactly how their shopping cart decides this; it may vary by supply and location and delivery options and such). Limit one denomination per customer, but you can buy all three individual ones, one of each.

This is promotion is currently limited to Prime members only.

This promotion is a bit confusing. Here’s the TL;DR: you can make a $3 profit by loading $10+ each on three Amazon gift cards sold together as a 3-pack that includes three holiday greeting cards. You invest $33 and make a $3 profit. The profit is a promotional credit that must be spent by 3/31/17. So let’s start from the beginning…

… Amazon launched new awkwardly named Anytime Greeting Card Gift Cards, sold as a 3-pack with a current price of $3 per 3-pack. Despite the hints of the name, these are not reloadable gift cards. You can only load them once per the lifetime of the card. I have no clue why they call them “Anytime” which hints of reusability and reloadability. Just like regular Amazon gift cards, the “Anytime gift card” don’t expire and they don’t have inactivity or other fees.

Free shipping on the cards for Prime members or the usual $49+ (or $25+ in books). You could stack this offer with the Book Coupon offer to get free shipping with a smaller order total.

A promotion is running on these until 12/31/16 that gets you a $2 promotional credit when you load $10 or more on a single Anytime gift card. Since these are sold as a 3-pack, you have to load $10 on each of them, and you get $6 total in promotional credits. So you spend $30 (three $10 loads) plus $3 for the gift cards, and you receive a $6 promotional credit.

I should point out that these are not just physical gift cards, they also include printed holiday greeting cards. They have two designs, a blue general holiday theme and a red Christmas theme. So technically you make a $3 profit and you also get three free holiday greeting cards 🙂

PS: I haven’t done this offer yet, so I can’t tell you the Xs and Os, but there are currently 7 reviews and 6 answered questions about them on the gift card listing that may answer your potential questions.

If you like to pay for Amazon purchases with a checking account instead of a credit card, Amazon is currently running another reload promotion, reload $100+ to your default Amazon Gift Card Balance with a checking account, and receive 2% of that amount as a bonus. The details are over there.

NOTE however that if you like to use credit cards as well, for the 4th quarter of 2016 (until 12/31/16), Discover offers 5% cashback (on up to $1500 per account for the quarter) on Amazon purchases. You have to first activate the offer in your Discover account. There are also some other Amazon promotions, for example, if you apply and get approved for a new AMEX Blue Cash Preferred (the one with the annual fee) they give you 10% back on the first $2,000 in Amazon purchases made within six months of opening.

While preparing Monday’s Lightning Deals schedule, the Amazon pages kept showing the gift card reload offer, so this is a good time to mention it again. NOTE however that this only works once for the lifetime of an Amazon account, so if you did this before, you can’t do it again. You can tell if you are eligible if you are logged on to your Amazon account and visit the Reload Promotional page. The offer is this: reload $100 or more to your Amazon Gift Card Balance, and get a $5 Amazon store bonus to use in future purchase. So it’s like a 5% discount (on a $100 reload).

Here are two screenshots of what you’ll see:

If you are eligible

If you are NOT eligible

This is a YMMV and from what I can tell, this only works once per Amazon account for the lifetime of that account. If you reload $100 or more on an Amazon Gift Card (including the virtual “default” gift card on your Amazon account), you will receive a $5 bonus. Details and terms and conditions of the promotion can be found at the promotional page. To figure out if you are eligible, visit the page while being logged on with your Amazon account. If you just want to read the terms and conditions, you don’t need to be logged in.

This offer may also be promoted on product pages, but just because you see it there, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are eligible. The “Learn More” link in the screenshot below is the page linked-to in the first paragraph above:

This promotion is only good once per Amazon account, so if you previously took advantage of it, you will not be eligible. If you are eligible, you will see the offer at the promotional Amazon page. If you are not eligible, you will see a message like “Unfortunately, you are not eligible for this offer”. The offer is this: you load $100 or more in your own Amazon Gift Card Balance account, and you receive a $5 bonus for it. I did this in the past, so I can’t do it again, I saw the above message.