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.

Merchant CashBack Strategies: Chili's Restaurant

Today, I thought I would discuss cash back strategies for Chili's.  Now personally, I do not eat at Chili's very often, but I know that it is a very popular, family friendly place to go for lunch or dinner.  Chili's often runs specials that are a good bargain. Since it is tough to get your baby back ribs by ordering online, my recommendations are to go with discounted gift cards.  The best of these cards usually can be purchased for a 12% discount through Plastic Jungle, one of the largest and most reputable of the discounted gift card resellers, and a company that I have mentioned often.  They guarantee every card purchased for 100 days.  If you are very clever, then you will know that you should use Bazando, a cash back portal, to buy your gift cards at Plastic Jungle, as they offer  an astounding $3 back on your purchase (at least they did on my last purchase there this week)! Of course, have your cash back credit card ready to buy those gift cards to snag even more cash back. OK, this may be a little confusing, so here are the steps:

1.  Register at Plastic Jungle here.  You only need to do this once. Log off once you have registered.

2.  Register at Bazando here.  You only need to do this once and they give you $3 just for signing up!

3.  Tell Bazando you want to shop at Plastic Jungle.  It will take you to Plastic Jungle's home page.  Log in, and find your Chili's gift card.  Lets say you buy a $50 gift card for $44.00.  Pay with your cash back credit card.

4.  Shortly, you will be notified from Bazando that your $3 cash back for your purchase at Plastic Jungle is pending.  Sometimes, this can take a day or two. Your net cost is now $41.00 for a $50 gift card.  That is an 18% discount.

5. Your gift card will arrive in your mailbox in a few days.  Now go out and enjoy whatever you want at Chili's and know you are paying the least amount possible.

Of course, if you eat at Chili's a lot, maybe you want to buy several gift cards at the same time.  Otherwise, I would just purchase what I need for the next month or two. The restaurant treats the gift cards just like cash.

Bazando - Another Nice Cash Back Portal

I am very excited to announce another fine cash back portal called Bazando.  There are two unique things that I like about this cash back site.  The first is that they offer 3% cash back on all gift cards purchased at Plastic Jungle, one of my favorite gift card discount sites.  That means that you are stacking discounts on top of discounts, a technique dear to my heart!  The 2nd feature of this site is that they represent merchants from all over the world, so if you live in France, for example, you can now take advantage of discounts at Darty, FNAC, La Redoute, etc. to name just a few.  It also has a UK website for UK merchants.  So now, all of my international friends can save money too!  They are even offering to put a few dollars (or euros) in your account just for signing up here.  Just click on the logo or the links for your free enrollment, and enjoy your savings!

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.

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.