October 2008 Archives

The National Retail Foundation says that the average U.S. consumer plans to spend $832.36 on holiday-related expenses this year, up 1.9% from last year. A Forrester Research report released last week says that online spending, however, is expected to increase by 12% this holiday season compared to last year.

In other words, people will be spending a greater proportion of their limited holiday budget online this year.

And they would be wise to do so: October isn't over yet but we're seeing deep discounts already, with free shipping offers and coupon codes and exclusive email-subscriber-only sales right and left. That's not even including the tax savings from buying from some online retailers, or the gas money saved by not chasing down out-of-stock items all over town...or the cash back available from online rewards programs.

But all rewards programs are not created equal. In fact, there are significant differences among the programs. Some rewards programs hide their shopping rebates by paying "points per dollar spent." Many consumers don't have the time or the know-how to convert those mysterious points into real, cash back percentages.

Every year, CompareRewards.com prepares an extensive analysis of cashback rates available at a variety of popular online retailers. Points are converted into rebate percentages to better enable consumers to compare rebate rates between programs. This year's analysis includes 19 rewards programs and 225 online stores and it found amazing variances among the programs: Cash back rates for the same merchant vary by as much as 27.4%, so knowing which rewards programs to use in order to maximize your reward is imperative.

Which rewards programs outshine the others this year? Which programs should you avoid? Click "Continue Reading" to find out!

I first reviewed the Swagbucks.com (aff) search and win website back in March -- you perform a search on their search engine and if you're the person to search at, or soonest after, a pre-specified win time, you will be awarded between one and five Swagbucks. Cashout costs have changed somewhat since then but a $5 Amazon GC has been consistently 45 Swagbucks for a while, to give you an idea of the price of rewards.

Every day I win at least once within my first 10 searches. I don't put in random junk; I use the search engine to make legitimate searches for things I would've looked for anyway. When you win, you'll see something like this:

Your regular search results will be below and you can continue searching as you'd like. I rarely win more than once in a day. According to the latest winners list displayed on the search results page, on average someone wins at least once a minute, generally twice. And this is pretty cool, too: if you refer a friend and they win, you win the same amount.

I've cashed out only for emailed $5 Amazon GCs or $10 Barnes and Noble GCs, or snail-mailed $5 Starbucks GCs. The emailed ones arrive the next day after requesting them; the snail-mailed ones within a week. I've cashed out for (and received) a total of $365 in GCs since I joined in March (thanks to my friends who've joined and searched and won with me).

Anyway -- today I noticed that Swagbucks is offering something new, called Mega Swagbucks. In addition to the regular denominations of 1 to 5 SB, they're now offering the chance to win 10, 20, 50, and 100 SB at a time! With about 50 being a $5 GC, and about 100 being a $10 GC, that would be a nice instant win! With the holidays approaching, Swagbucks is an easy (and fast!) way to supplement your probably-tighter holiday budget this year.

Please join and win with me here!

Purchance.com Program Review

Click here to join.

Date Launched: October 2008

Who Can Join: U.S. residents 18 or older with a valid email address

How it Works: Make a purchase through the website's links to one of around 175 merchants and you'll get a chance to win a refund of your purchase price (less shipping and tax). The odds of winning vary depending on the merchant, with your best odds 1 in 3 (Match.com) and your worst 1 in 125 (Dell). Every day a merchant will be chosen to feature better odds than usual.

How You'll Get Paid: You'll know if you won 7 days after your purchase. Ninety days after your purchase you can request a check, and checks are cut weekly. Note that this is considered a "prize" and as such, you'll receive a 1099 for any winnings over $600.

My Take: Interesting concept, and the site looks great and clearly has a good sense of humor ("this ain't your mamma's cash back site!"). You're basically betting what you could have earned in guaranteed cash back elsewhere, in the hopes of winning a 100% rebate. Assuming most people have the same risk tolerance that I do, perhaps Purchance is best suited for smaller orders or for merchants that offer low cashback rates elsewhere, so you're risking less. I'd strongly suggest you calculate out what you would earn at another rewards program first, then look at the odds for that merchant on Purchance before you decide which program to shop through. Fun site, though -- hope that people will post and let us know if they win and how much!

Last week, a week ago today to be exact, was CompareRewards.com's seventh "birthday." My daughter was just sitting up on her own and hadn't yet learned to walk when the site went live -- now she's in second grade. My, doesn't time fly? ;)

Warmest thanks to my long-time supporters and friends! Stay tuned; another annual birthday chat party, complete with lots of prizes, is in the works!

No coupon required! :) And while it's 25% as of this writing. I've seen it go as high as 30% on some days. But I'm getting ahead of myself -- let me explain:

As you know if you're a faithful reader here, Microsoft bought out Jellyfish.com about a year ago and then integrated the cashback portion of the site into their Live search engine. You can get cash back by starting your shopping session with the merchant links on their portal, located at http://cashback.live.com, OR you can do a search for the product you want to buy on http://www.Live.com and you MAY have a sponsored ad display that will offer you Live Cashback if you click through the link there.

And THAT, my friends, is where you'll find 25% cash back for Ebay BINs.

Let me break it down for you step by step (it's way easier to do than explain, trust me):

1. Create a free Hotmail account here if you don't have one already. (Either of the two options at that link should work.)
2. Go to http://cashback.live.com and log in with your Hotmail account.
3. Go to http://www.Live.com and do a search for "laptop". No, you don't have to buy a laptop, that's just the easiest thing to type to get the ad to pop up.
4. Click anywhere in the gray box at the top and it'll take you to Ebay. It's a "sponsored sites" ad that says "Live Search cashback. Buy items on Ebay. You may get 25% off with PayPal if eligible."
5. Notice the icon at the top of your Ebay screen that says "Microsoft cashback 25%. Must use Buy It Now and PayPal." Once this is activated, you can buy ANYTHING ON EBAY (not just the laptop you searched for) and you'll get 25% cash back. You have 60 minutes after you clicked through the ad, otherwise you have to go back to Live, search, and click through again.
6. After you BIN and pay by PayPal, you'll get a message in your Ebay account with a link to click to claim your cash back. Keep in mind, folks, you don't have to have the funds in your PP balance; you can choose a credit card as your backup funding source.

Does it work? Oh yes. I've used it. ;) They did it as a limited time promotion back in June and I bought an 8GB iPod Touch for $249.99 and got $87.50 cash back (35%), bringing the cost down to $162.49. I used it this week to get a Dell Inspiron laptop for $319.

They've been tweaking how this works since this summer. Until recently, the amount of cash back you were offered for Ebay BINs depended on what your search term was at Live.com. Now it appears they're going to one standard rate for Ebay (25% or 30%), regardless of your search term.

You'll want to read the fine print on how this works. A few things I'll note here: again, you have 60 minutes after clicking through a Live.com sponsored ad for Ebay in order for the cashback to still be applied to your account. You do have to pay by PayPal. This is for BINs ONLY, not for winning bids. You can earn a max of $200 per order, and a max of 12 Ebay rewards per calendar year...so you probably don't want to blow this on $20 BINs; save it up for big dollar purchases. Your cashback is held in a pending account for 60 days before you can cash it out. Request payment by check or PayPal when you have $5 or more available (no longer pending). Takes about a week after requesting payment to receive PayPal.

If you have any questions about how this works, feel free to email me and I'll be happy to help if I can!

Also, as an aside, if you're a Live Cashback fan, you may want to follow #cashbackdotcom on Twitter (that's Live Search's Twitter account and they give you heads-up on special deals). If you're new to Twitter, I can highly recommend Twitbin to stay on top of Tweets without having a popup or having to remember to go to the Twitter website to see what's up with your friends. It's free, of course. ;)

Membership in this program is limited to people with a Citi Credit Card with ThankYou Network, an eligible Citibank checking account enrolled in ThankYou Network, a Smith Barney Financial Management Account (FMA Card) enrolled in ThankYou Network, or Expedia account linked to a ThankYou Member account.

The program is free to join -- sign up here.

Earn points for shopping both online (there are over 300 merchants in their online mall) or in-store. You can use any credit card you want when shopping online, but you'll earn double points for using a registered Citi credit or debit card. Points can also be purchased, at a cost of $25 per 1,000 points.

Redemptions start at 1,000 points (for $5 GC). A $25 gift card costs 3,500 points.

My take: If you pay your credit card off in full each month, or if you have an eligible Citibank debit card, this program is definitely worthwhile. Their shopping rates are very competitive when the points are doubled for using a Citi card; otherwise, they're low-to-average compared to other online shopping sites. Remember, though: if you're charging to a Citicard and paying interest on it, you're not really "earning" all this cash back -- they're recouping a big chunk of it with the interest you pay. So, pay in full or use a debit card. Of course, that's good advice for anyone using any online rewards program. ;)

Upromise (aff), one of the biggest online shopping rewards programs, is owned by college loan processor (if that's the right term for them), Sallie Mae. Sallie Mae, as you can imagine, is being negatively impacted by the economy and there have been a flurry of recent news stories that give me reason to be concerned about Sallie Mae's, thus Upromise's, stability.

Starting a few weeks ago -- Washington Post, September 20th: "Sallie Mae President Leaving." C.E. Andrews, the company's president and former CEO, announced he was leaving at the end of September after 5 years with the company. Hmm, interesting.

October 3rd, the Washington Post: "In Light of Crisis, Common Trading Practice Looks Risky." This notes that the price of Sallie Mae's "credit default swaps" (like an insurance policy against loans defaulting) had more than doubled recently, "apparently signaling that swap traders think the firm is more likely to collapse."

Then, "With no way out of trouble, more students likely to default," said the Seattle Times on October 6th. The story blamed short-sighted decisions made by immature young adults and aggressive marketing by student lenders, leaving graduates often with substandard educations to deal with high fees and rate hikes for late payments and no ability to discharge the debt by bankruptcy. The article tells the story of a young woman whose Sallie Mae student loan was originally for $20,000 but went up to $35,000 due to interest and penalties.

Same date, same paper, another article. "Students feeling economy's crunch" includes comments by Sallie Mae spokesman Tom Joyce, saying that he hoped the markets calmed down before the next batch of private loan apps came through, implying that the rates would be higher and the loans harder to come by.

October 12th, Investment News: "Hard times are forcing parents to cut back on college saving." The byline: "529 sales drop; further decline expected." This article talks about how parents are saving less for their kids' education because of a tighter economy. Net sales for section 529 plans (college savings investment plans, of which Sallie Mae handles $19 billion worth through its Upromise affiliates) dropped by a third in the first half of the year and was expected to drop even more through year-end due to the financial crisis.

In an October 15th Bloomberg article, "Citigroup Curbs Foreign-Student Loans at Harvard, MIT," Joyce is interviewed again, saying that it'll be tougher for all students to get student loans now. "People are going to have to have very good credit or have a co-signer who has excellent credit."

From the October 15th Fairfax (Va.) Times: "Rules changing in student loan game": "The nation's largest student lender, Sallie Mae, has reported losses of more than $2 billion in the last year alone. Although the U.S. government guarantees lenders will be reimbursed for federal student loans, the bulk of Sallie Mae's losses were from private student loans, which aren't guaranteed."

October 16th, in the Fayetteville Observer: "Sallie Mae closing 20 offices worldwide."

Also on October 16th, Sallie Mae sends out a press release, "Sallie Mae Offers Tips, Tools for Successful Student Loan Repayment." Reminding May graduates that their six month grace period will end soon and they'll have to start repaying their loans, Sallie Mae advised graduates to, among other things, consider direct drafting their payments and using Upromise earnings to help pay down their bill. They quoted a borrower who emphasized the importance of having good credit if you want to buy a house.

Sallie Mae will release its third quarter financials today and will discuss them tomorrow in a con call with analysts. I'll link to the transcript as soon as it's available. It'll be interesting to see if or how this mess will impact the Upromise rewards program.

Last week, Best Buy (aff) announced that it was launching an additional option for members of its free RewardZone rewards program aimed at video gamers.

You have to be a member of Best Buy Reward Zone first (join in-store or here online), then you can join the Gamers Club portion of the program, which offers a bonus 500 points, worth $5, for every $150 spent on qualifying video game-related items (video game and PC software, or video game accessories). This is in addition to the regular points you'll earn from every purchase at Best Buy using your RewardZone membership (1 point per dollar; with 250 points required for a $5 GC).

If you're big into games, and the price on your game or accessory is the same at multiple merchants, it isn't a huge reward but it'd help tip the scales in the favor of buying from BestBuy.

I want to welcome all of my new site visitors stopping by after the interview on Good Morning America Now! Glad to have you here! I've been running CompareRewards.com for seven years and I've been using rewards programs to save and earn money online since 1997, when I left my job to become a stay-at-home mom and was looking for ways to stretch the family dollar. This may be the first you're hearing of these programs, but they've been around since back then! (They're not that big of a secret, though -- some rewards programs have nearly 10 million members!)

I could have filled several entire shows with information to help you make the most of your tightening budget, but with limited time I had to just give you some guidelines and mention a few online stores you may not have heard of before that offer outstanding bargains. If you'll take a few minutes to read this post, I'll give you a lot more information that will help you save and maybe even EARN real money online.

A rewards program is just a fancy term for a website that gives you something back for doing something online.

Shopping rewards programs, the kind I talk about most here on CompareRewards.com, are like big electronic malls. They collect links to many online stores and put them in one place. Instead of going directly to, say, Walmart.com to shop, if you first go to a rewards program's website, then click through THEIR link to Walmart.com, the rewards program will get a commission, which they share with you in the form of a cashback rebate or points (similar to frequent flyer miles) that you can redeem for gift cards or merchandise. A couple of extra clicks to shop through the rewards program's link to your desired store instead of going directly to the store's site can mean up to 30% in cash back! AND, when you can combine cash back with other promotions, like coupon codes for free shipping or 20% off your order total, plus whatever sales the store has going on at the time, you can see how the savings add up!

Here are a few of my favorite online shopping rewards programs, sites I can recommend to you with NO hesitation. They are totally free to join, they have great shopping rebates, and they pay reliably.

Ebates.com : Great cash back for shopping, plus $10 when you join and make your first purchase with their link to one of over a thousand participating stores. Get paid quarterly by check or PayPal when your shopping rebates are over $5. They provide coupon codes for you to combine with their cash back rebates and they feature a daily double-rebate merchant and a shopping blog. They've been in business since '99, have 6 million members who've spent over $1 billion through the site's links, and the company's got a good BBB report...that pretty much says it all.

QuickRewards.net: In its sixth year of operation, QuickRewards.net (don't forget it's a .net!) also offers very good shopping rates, a little lower than Ebates.com but the trade-off is that you don't have to wait a quarter to get paid -- you can shop, request your cashback to be paid to your PayPal account, and receive it all within a week. If you'd prefer a physical gift card, you can choose cards from stores like Walmart or Disney, or request electronic gift cards to stores like Amazon.com! Great shopping finds are posted daily to their deal blog by yours truly, too. ;) AND, QuickRewards.net provides ways for you to earn besides just shopping, for instance, by completing surveys, entering contests, even playing games. An exclusive promotion for GMA viewers: join QuickRewards.net before Sunday at this link and either place one shopping order, or if you're short on cash, complete one survey on the site, and they'll give you a bonus $3 to your account. Request it right away to PayPal if you'd like, and see how fast they pay!

RewardShopping.com: Although the shopping component of the Superpoints Network is relatively new, their search-and-win site LuckySearch has been up for a year. RewardShopping is growing fast, though, as they're adding dozens of merchants a day. Unlike Ebates and QuickRewards.net, here you'll earn points per dollar (instead of a % cash back) when you shop through the site's links to your favorite stores. You can then cash the points in for gift cards or merchandise like Wii's. Their rates are still very good when you calculate out the value of the points. While they don't have coupon codes available on the site yet, they're working on it! Also, you can supplement what you earn from shopping if you're randomly picked to win points while using their search engine (and if you refer the site to a friend, and they search-and-win, you win, too) and you get 15 points (worth 15c) each time one of your friends shops. This is another site that pays FAST: shop, cashout, and they'll send out your gift card or merchandise prize within a week or so.

To summarize: join a shopping rewards program website (a giant electronic mall) and click through THEIR link to Walmart.com or your favorite merchant instead of going to the store's website directly, and you will earn a reward -- cash, gift cards, or merchandise. That's the bottom line.

If I can provide any additional information or recommendations, or if you have any questions at all about how these programs work, PLEASE don't hesitate to ask! I was new at this stuff once myself -- just send me an email and I will get right back with you. We're all in the same boat, trying to get more bang for our buck. And with Christmas right around the corner, now is the best time to join an online shopping rewards program!

In about two weeks I'll be releasing my annual shopping rebate comparison chart that will tell you where to shop to get the best cash back at specific merchants this holiday season! To get a reminder when it's posted, plus a twice-monthly summary of the best tips, news, and reviews posted on CompareRewards, email me with "Subscribe" in the subject line and I'll set you up to receive the CompareRewards Insider!

If you saw the GMA Now interview, at the end of the segment I talked about a couple of websites that maybe you haven't heard of that also offer some great values for consumers. I had two other sites lined up to talk about, too, that got cut for time. I want to tell you more about these sites, because they stretch your dollar in a couple of ways: low everyday pricing, frequent coupon codes, and cash back if you click through a rewards program's link to their website!

Restaurant.com: As you saw in the GMA Now story, this website sells discounted gift certificates for restaurants, with their most popular offering their $25 gift certificates for $10. Because they offer pretty frequent coupon codes for 50 or 60% off, and they also participate in many rewards programs, you can often get them for even less!

But first: the way it works is you enter your zipcode and a search radius, and it'll pull up a list of participating restaurants in your area. These are typically not large chains but more of your local, hometown restaurants (that's where you find the best food, anyway!). See the site for any restrictions -- for instance, it may not be valid on Fridays and Saturdays, or may only be good before 5pm. And no, you can't spend it on booze. So, pick your restaurant, add it to your cart, apply your coupon code if you have one, and check out. You'll be able to print the certificate from your home printer instantly! No shipping delay, no shipping cost. You can buy, print, and spend it the same night if you want!

Now a quick aside about coupon codes: If you want to combine a coupon code and cash back, my advice is to stick with coupons provided by the rewards program you're shopping through. Otherwise, there's a chance the coupon will take off a discount at checkout, but the cashback won't credit.

Restaurant.com was kind enough to create a coupon code for Good Morning America Now viewers: If you go straight to their site and enter code GMA at checkout, you'll get 60% off your order, bringing the cost of your $25 gift certificate down to just $4! This is also combinable with QuickRewards.net's cashback (at 20% this week if you want to join and click through their link to Restaurant.com). If you use another rewards program, you'll need to use whatever coupon code they provide. The average reward for Restaurant.com is around 15% cash back, just to give you a benchmark.

Now...If you're routinely buying magazines at the supermarket or the newsstand, you are spending too much. Period. You can get a year's subscription to a lot of magazines for the price of a couple of issues in-store! Here are two great websites you can use to save money on magazines:

BestDealMagazines.com: Buy a magazine at the newsstand, and you're going to pay what, a minimum of $4 an issue? Why do that when BestDealMagazines has annual subscriptions for as low as $4.69 a year? In fact, they have over 100 annual subscriptions for under ten bucks, plus they regularly offer coupon codes to bring the price down even further! For our Good Morning America Now visitors, they've generated a couple of special coupon codes for you, but these are only good through Sunday:

FAMILY -- one year of Family Fun for $4.98 with coupon code (half off their usual great rate!)
QRSPEC25-- 25% off BDM's regular rate for Grand or Vegetarian Times -- just $3.52 after coupon
QRSPEC25 (yes, same code) -- 25% off their regular low rate for ShopSmart (the new ad-free magazine from Consumer Reports that's all about getting the best deal for your money when shopping -- I HIGHLY recommend this magazine!) -- one year for just $16.46 after coupon!
QRSPEC17 -- 17% off any other title

Many rewards programs also allow you to earn cash back when you shop at BestDealMagazines, with around 10% being the prevailing rate. Again the above coupon codes will combine with QuickRewards.net's cash back (15% for this site), or they'll work if you go directly to BestDealMagazines.com and forgo the cash back altogether. If you shop through a different rewards program, though, use whatever codes they provide for you instead.

ValueMags.com: Another great magazine site that participates in many rewards programs for cash back is ValueMags. These guys don't usually run coupon codes, but after you factor in the cash back you can get from rewards programs (on average around 20%) along with their already-low rates on typically expensive magazine subscriptions, there are great deals to be had! Here are some examples:

• Entertainment Weekly (57 issues) -- $38.95, or $31.16 after 20% cash back = $0.55 an issue. One year for about the same price as 9 weekly issues!
• Sports Illustrated (56 issues) -- $39.95, or $31.96 after 20% cash back = $0.57 an issue. One year for about the price of 8 weekly issues!
• Fortune (26 issues a year) -- $29.98, or $23.94 after 20% cash back = $0.92 an issue. 26 issues for the price of 5!

Ebates.com offers higher than average cash back for ValueMags, at 25%, so you'll actually pay a little less than the above after cashback if you join there and shop through their ValueMags link.

...and last, but certainly not least:
BookCloseouts.com: Do you enjoy digging through the clearance bins at the bookstore? Or do you just like getting new books at bargain basement prices? BookCloseouts sells overstocked books at tremendous savings off the cover price. The books will probably have a little marker line that goes across the edge of the pages that you can only see if you turn the book on its side...but who does that, anyway? Shipping's very reasonable, based on weight among other things, and they almost always have a coupon code out to help bring the cost down. PLUS, a good number of rewards programs will pay you cash back for shopping there on top of all that -- on average around 6.5 or 7%.

I placed an order from them a couple of weeks ago and got 29 books for $62 after adding shipping and subtracting the coupon's discount and the cash back. These weren't all cheap paperbacks, either -- almost all were hardback books with some having a list price in the $30-range! I knocked out a lot of Christmas gifts in one online shopping trip!

These coupon codes will combine with cash back from QuickRewards.net only, paying 9% cash back this week (or of course they'll work if you go directly to BookCloseouts.com and bypass the rewards programs' cash back):

$5 off a $35 Purchase with code: GMA Password: bookcloseouts.com
$10 off a $65 Purchase with code: QuickRewards-10 Password: bookcloseouts.com

Examples of some great books you can find on BookCloseouts.com right now (but be aware that as these are closeouts, they're in limited supply and when they run out, they're out!):

• Party Food for Kids, hardcover: $3.49 (list $12.95)
• And the Fans Roared, hardcover with CD: $14.99 (list $49.95)
• The Frugal Woman's Guide to a Rich Life, paperback: $4.99 (list $14.99)
• Daytona, hardcover: $4.99 (list $29.95)
• All That Glittered: The Golden Age of Drama on Broadway, hardcover: $5.99 (list $32.95)
• Disney Animal Friends Storybook Collection, hardcover: $5.99 (list $12.99)
• Five-Star Living on a Two-Star Budget, paperback: $3.99 (list $10.99)

So...great finds on interesting books for yourself or to give as gifts, plus coupons and cash back! That's what makes BookCloseouts.com a keeper!

To sum up:
There are a lot of great websites out there that you may not have heard of before that offer great value -- you just have to know where to shop! These kinds of deals are out there every day, and a good rewards program will make it easy for you to find them. Combining sales, coupon codes, AND shopping rewards will help stretch your dollar further than you ever knew it could. Don't be afraid to try out new websites because who knows what hidden gems you'll turn up!

Ebates announced in a press release yesterday that since the company's inception, its members have spent over $1 billion (yes, that's billion with a "B") through the rewards program's website!

The company's CEO, Kevin Johnson, says that Ebates' sales are way up, 50% over last year, and that they're expecting a record holiday shopping season. It seems counter-intuitive that you'd see a segment of the market doing BETTER than expected right now, but I think higher gas prices pushed people into shopping online more this year, and that people are realizing that with a tighter budget they need to break down and take advantage of the great online deals (with comparison shopping, coupon codes, and cash back) that have been here all along.

I was happy to see that a testimonial I submitted about Ebates was quoted in the press release. They have a great program with a unique set of features, excellent cashback rates, tons of participating stores, and a dedication to customer service. With around ten years of experience, and $1 billion-with-a-"B" in member purchases through the site, while maintaining a positive rating with the BBB...you can see why I feel very comfortable in recommending them to others.

Not a member of Ebates and want to join? Sign up here (aff) and when you make your first purchase, they'll give you a bonus $10 to your account! But hurry -- this offer expires 10/31!

Well, what ELSE would they name it? ;)

In a press release today, ToysRUs announced it was launching a free rewards program for its customers called RewardsRUs. Here's the low-down:

The program is open to: US residents age 13 or older

How to join: You can sign up online or in-store

How to earn: You'll earn when you present your membership card at checkout (or you can enter information from a store receipt into the website to get credit if you didn't have your card). $150 in purchases through 12/24/08 = 5 "R"Us Dollars. This excludes purchases of gift cards and Pampers Value Boxes. There is a separate benefit for members related to Pampers Value Boxes: Buy 9 within 12 months and get 1 free.

How to redeem: Your "R"Us Dollars are mailed to you automatically each time your total spending tops $150 (with those two exclusions above). The $5 "R"Us certificate must be spent on a purchase of $5 of more before tax. Certificates must be spent by 1/31/09. I'd assume some new promotion would replace this one at that point.

My take: It's not stunning, but it is free. Spending $150 to get $5 is like a 3.3% rebate. If you were going to shop at TRU anyway, you might as well take advantage of it. This is the second major retailer (the first being JCPenney) that has rolled out a non-credit-card-tied loyalty program in the last couple of months. It's something I think is long overdue. You want to reward all of your customers for their loyalty (and study their shopping patterns to provide better marketing), not just those who use your store's credit card.

I think we'll see more of this type of program in 2009.

If you're a member of the Borders Rewards program, be sure to pop into your local store tomorrow for their One Day Sale. They'll have ten top new releases for 50% off, almost 100 DVDs for $5.99, 40% off list price of over 40 other DVDs and CDs, 25% off board games, BOGO holiday cards, BOGO Burt's Bees, and more!

You may also want to print this coupon and take it with you; it expires 10/13.

Read more about the sale here. Borders Rewards is free to join; sign up in-store.

If you're a member of the Wellness360 health rewards program and you have reached the $25 minimum payment threshold, be sure to go to the site and request your payment by 10/15. Payment is by request, otherwise your earnings roll over to the next quarter. Referral earnings for the prior month don't post until the 16th, but they'll tack them on to your quarterly check after you cash out. Redeem points by clicking on My Account, My Points, Viewed, Redeem Points.

Wellness360 pays members for doing health-related activities like reading articles, tracking your vitals, updating exercise and food diaries, completing a health risk assessment, and more. Be sure to stay on each page for 10 seconds or longer in order to get credit.

To read my full review of Wellness360, click here. To go ahead and join Wellness360, please click here to join as my referral.

SearchPerks Review

Please click here to join!

Who is Eligible:
The first 1 million to register before 12/31/08, with a Windows Live (or Hotmail) account. U.S. residents age 13 or older only. Internet Explorer is the required browser.

How It Works:
Sign up and download the Perk Counter. You'll get 500 "tickets" for this. Afterward, you'll earn one ticket for each search performed, up to 25 a day. Additional ways to earn tickets may be added. Redeem tickets for prizes (a list of "examples" is here -- it includes frequent flyer miles and merchandise). Prizes will only be awarded to members who stay active in the program through its end date, April 29, 2009. Inactivity for 180 days will result in your account being deleted.

My Take:
This is obviously another way Microsoft is using to try to promote its Live search engine. The prizes are nice, but it'll take consistent usage of the search engine to earn enough to cash out for them, and they are on a first-come, first-served basis. I don't see any restrictions on the number of accounts per household, so there is some room for fraud/misuse, although it does say you'll need to also meet the requirements for membership in Live Search Club at the end of the promotion, which probably does have some kind of "per household" requirement. If you're going to do searches anyway, you may find this useful. Personally, I think it's a lot of work for a payoff way too far into the future for me to get excited about. It is something for "nothing," though, and we can be reasonably assured that Microsoft isn't going anywhere between now and April of next year.

Like SearchPerks? You may also like these similar programs: Blingo, LuckySearch, Swagbucks, and Winzy!