Bazando No Longer Offers Cash Back at Plastic Jungle

Bazando, is one of the leading cash back portals that I have recommended, and the best if you shop online in the UK, France, or Germany.  It has also been my favorite "go to" site for buying gift cards at Plastic Jungle, a discount reseller of gift cards which I have also recommended.  Bazando offered 3% cash back on top of the already decent discounts offered by Plastic Jungle.  Well, that relationship apparently is no more.  That is too bad for us consumers.  However, one can still get 1% cash back through Mr. Rebates for purchase of discount gift cards at Cardpool.  Cardpool's discounted prices often matched or even exceed those of Plastic Jungle, so there is still some hope out there.

Lowes Gift Cards on Sale - 8% off

For the next 48 hours, the gift card reseller Cardpool is offering Lowe's gift cards at 8% off their face value.  Remember that if you go through Mr. Rebates first, you can pick up an additional 1% cash back.  These cards won't last long!  Remember also, that Discover and Chase Freedom cards are offering 5% cash back starting today at all home improvement centers.  While not as good as the gift cards, there should not be any reason why you pay full retail this month for your lawn and garden needs.  Spring has arrived!

Attention Kmart Shoppers!

Today only, Ebates is offering 8% cash back on all online purchases if you go through their website.  First, pick up a Kmart gift card from Cardpool at a 10% discount, or 11% if you go through Mr. Rebates, then head off to do all your shopping and score a nifty 18-20% cash back on all of your Kmart purchases.  Of course, if you pay with your cash back credit card, the discount is even more.  

Happy shopping!

Merchant Cashback Strategies: Lowes: How to Get 20% Off on Everything You Buy

With the advent of spring arriving, we will soon hear once again the roar of lawn mowers in the yard, the quiet digging sounds of new flowers being planted, and the rhythmic spit-spit sounds of sprinklers going off.  With that in mind, I thought that I would focus on Lowes, one of the two big box home improvement stores, and how to save almost 20% on everything you buy there. Impossible you say?  Then read on.

Step 1:  Pick yourself up some 10% off coupons on Ebay.  These are the coupons that are given out by the US Post Office on behalf of Lowes when someone changes their address.  There are folks who make a living collecting and reselling these lovely little goodies.  One can usually pick them up for an average of about $1.20-1.50 per coupon.  I save myself some time by looking for the "Buy Now" offers.  The current batch are good through May 15th, 2011, which should get you through the spring cleaning season. Make sure you get the coupons that are good up to $5000 in purchases, and you can save some serious money.  By the way, Home Depot and Ace often honor these coupons.

Step 2:  Sign up at Mr. Rebates.  I will explain why in a minute.

Step 3:  Get ready to purchase some Lowes gift cards at a discount.  They can be had for 7-8% off face value at Cardpool and Plastic Jungle. I have mentioned these websites many times, but if you haven't signed up yet, do it now.  Just click on the links.  While Visa Freedom card and Discover cards are offering 5% cash back on your purchases at home improvement centers starting April 1st, you can get a jump on them and get 7-8% instead by buying these cards.  If you are very clever, you will go through Mr. Rebates (see Step 2) to purchase your discount gift cards at Cardpool, thus nailing an extra 1%.  And if you have truly been following my advice, you will purchase those gift cards with your cash back credit cards, adding yet another 1-3%.  If you are not planning to buy online, make sure you buy the regular gift cards, NOT the electronic gift cards (which can only be used online).  Ohh, and for those of you who read this far, if you go through Mr. Rebates to purchase your coupons on Ebay in Step #1, you will get an extra 3% back on that purchase as well :)

Step 4:  Once you receive your gift cards, proceed to to the store, with your 10% coupon and gift card in hand, and smile when you get to the checkout counter, knowing you have just saved about 20% on everything you are buying.

There you have it. How to save 20% at Lowes all year long.


BONUS!!  I am trying to build my readership, as this Blog is new.  If you find this information useful, please subscribe to my Blog.  For the first 25 readers who subscribe to Cardpool and Mr. Rebates from this blog, I will send a free 10% off coupon to Lowes for purchases up to $5000.  Just send me a message via my personal Facebook page, so that I know where to send the coupon.

Whole Foods Gift Cards on Sale - While They Last

 Cardpool currently has 10 Whole Foods $100 gift cards on sale for $97.  All of their gift cards are 100% guaranteed for 101 days.


Go through Mr. Rebates first and get an extra 1% off.  These will be gone in 2 hours.  Happy shopping!

How to Buy an Ipad 2 and Get Cash Back!

Unless you live on another planet, you probably know that Steve Jobs and his Apple crew unveiled the new Ipad 2 yesterday, to go on sale March 11th.  The price is $500, same as the current price for the original Ipad, but with a lot of upgraded features.


Apple has also announced that the Ipad 2 is going to be distributed in several major outlets in addition to its own stores.  Merchants currently include Best Buy, Sam's Club and Walmart.


I sincerely doubt that any of these merchants will be discounting the price of the Ipad2, so plan on paying $500, both online and in the stores.


So how does one get cash back (in addition to using a cash back credit card)?  It's not as hard as you think. Let me take you through the process using Best Buy as an example.


1.  Sign up at Cardpool, a major gift card reseller, if you are not already a member.  It's free.


2.  Sign up at Mr. Rebates, a major online cashback portal, if you have not already done so. It too is free.  This site gives you 1% cashback on all your purchases at Cardpool.


3.  Go through Mr. Rebates to the Cardpool website and purchase a Best Buy giftcard for a 6% discount.  You are getting an extra 1% from Mr. Rebates for going through their site, so that is 7% so far. If you plan on buying your Ipad online, you can buy an electronic Ecode instead of an actual plastic gift card, and the code will be sent to your email within hours.


4.  If you are purchasing online (and why not, you might save sales tax), wait for your gift card or eCode to arrive.  Then go to Mr. Rebates again, select Best Buy as your merchant, and proceed to the Best Buy website.  Purchase your Ipad 2 with your gift card.  Mr. Rebates will give you another 1% ($5) on your purchase.


5.  Sit back, pat yourself on the back for being a smart shopper, and wait for your new Ipad 2 to arrive at your doorstep. You have just saved 7-8% on the Ipad2 going through Best Buy.

Breakdown of a Recent Cash Back Transaction

   Too much talking and not enough doing does not make Steve a very interesting blogger.  So I thought that I would occasionally post a recent cash back transaction that I did, so you can see the thought process and the savings realized.

   I have started to take up cooking, just to throw a little variety into our chicken-fish-meat-fish dinner routine.  Through one of the many "hot deal" aggregator sites on the Internet, I came across a 6 qt. slow cooker at J.C. Penneys, originally $59.95, now on sale for $29.95 plus S&H.  I probably would not have bought it, except that there was a checkout code that whacked another $10 off the price, bringing it down to $19.95.  Now I was interested!

   Here is how I proceeded.  I first went to the evRewards site to see which cashback portal was offering the best deal that day.  Ebates was offering 4% cashback if I used them to make my purchase at the J.C. Penney website.  Then I went to Gift Card Granny to see what kind of discount I could get on JC Penneys gift cards.  It turned out that you can buy these giftcards at a 13% discount through Cardpool, 14% through Plastic Jungle, and 15% through giftcards.com.  I already knew that I could get an extra 1% if I used Mr. Rebates to buy a Cardpool giftcard, which was the only site at the time offering Ecodes.  Since I was buying online and the sale was of a limited duration, I wanted my gift card fast. I paid for the giftcard with my 1% back credit card, bringing the total savings up to 15% for the giftcard.

  So I went ahead and purchased an eCode giftcard to J.C. Penney through Cardpool using the Mr. Rebates portal.  Then I went to Ebates, selected J.C. Penney as my merchant and was directed to the J.C. Penneys website.

   I placed my order, earning 4% back from Ebates on my $26.69 total purchase, and paid with my J.C. Penney's giftcard Ecode, for which I had just paid 85% of face value.  Net savings were 19% off the already heavily discounted price of $19.95.  

  It was a very small purchase, but it illustrates the power of stacking cash back rewards.  My slow cooker was shipped this morning.  Hopefully, by next week, I will be burning my first crockpot pot roast!

Merchant Cashback Strategies: Amazon.com

   Each week, I hope to feature an article detailing the best strategy I use for getting the maximum cash back from a particular merchant.  I have decided to start with Amazon.com, one of, if not the largest retailer on the Internet. During the holidays, Amazon's business soars, and so remember to bookmark this post for when you do your holiday shopping.

   

   Amazon is one of the few major Internet merchants for which there is not a cashback discount offered through any of the cashback portals that I recommend. 

So what options are there? 


   Basically, one has 2 options.

  1.  You can apply for the Amazon Rewards Visa credit card.  If you qualify, you will receive 3% cash back on all of your Amazon purchases, a $40 signup bonus, 2% back on gas station, restaurant and drugstore purchases and 1% back on everything else.  There is no annual fee, and the card carries a variable interest rate of 13.24% to 21.24%, depending on your creditworthiness.  Surprisingly, in my opinion, Lifehacker readers just last week voted the Amazon Rewards Visa as the best cash back Rewards credit card available in the market.  Perhaps it was because of the demographics of their readership, but I find the card relatively unremarkable.  To read the Lifehacker article, click here.

2.  The 2nd option is to purchase an Amazon online gift card Ecode through one of the gift card resellers I have recommended in my earlier blogs, such Cardpool or Plastic Jungle. My experience has been that Cardpool seems to more frequently offer the Ecodes and their discount runs 3%.  There are two other benefits to using this option.  First, if you use the Mr. Rebates portal to reach Cardpool and purchase your card or cards, the Mr. Rebates cashback discount brings the total savings to 4%.  The 2nd benefit is that you receive your gift card Ecode within a couple hours, and if you buy the gift card with a cashback credit card, the total savings can go up to 5-6%, depending on your cashback credit card.  A side benefit is that you do not have to ding your credit rating by having one more credit card in your wallet.  The one negative is that one does not get the onetime $40 signup bonus that the Amazon card offers. As I have recommended before however, do not buy more gift cards than you can use in the short term.  There will always be more available for purchase at a later date.

   The choice is yours, but I recommend using Cardpool via the Mr. Rebates portal.

Discounted Gift Card Sites

   I use discounted gift cards frequently for my everyday purchases. The two sites that I am going to tell you about today represent the most professional of the sites out there.

First, why use discounted gift cards?  Well, they are easily purchased in the amounts you need, the discount savings are significant (up to 30% off), and you don't need to buy a store "loyalty" credit card to get the savings.  It is an easy, safe and guaranteed way to put money back in your pocket. My only caution is to buy only what you will use in the next 2-3 weeks, as your money is locked up in these cards until you use them.


The biggest of the discount  gift card sites is Plastic Jungle.  They offer more cards for more merchants than anyone out there.  They also tend to offer the highest discounts on many of the popular merchants. Register now, because you do not want to take the time to register when your favorite card shows up, or you could lose it.

The 2nd most popular site is Cardpool.  This firm is good at getting some of the hard to come by gift cards, like Amazon, Whole Foods and Walmart. Each morning at 7 a.m. Eastern, they put a fresh batch of cards on their site, and I have found this to be the best time to grab the hard to come by cards.  These cards usually are sold within 10 minutes.

So how do you know which site has the best deals for your merchant?

Well, I use Gift Card Granny.  This site is an aggregator of all of the top discount giftcard resellers, and also includes giftcards being sold on Ebay. I go to this site virtually every day to find giftcards I am interested in, and it is a good way to see who offers the best discounts on any given merchant.

Let me share a bit of advice, however.  I would NEVER buy a giftcard from the Ebay site.  The giftcard resellers guarantee every purchase to be as represented for up to 100 days.  No Ebay seller will do that.  I personally had $388 in Whole Foods giftcards that would not work.  I notified Cardpool and my credit card was credited my entire purchase price the same day.  That is the type of service you will get from these companies, and I can sleep at night because of it.

In a future post, I will go through the analysis of why I think discounted gift cards represent the fastest, cleanest way to big discounts; and if you purchase with a cashback credit card, the savings just multiply.