Somewhat surprising to me, a post I did on Catalina grocery coupons seems to be a big traffic source from Google. So I thought I’d do a post giving some more info on what I know about Catalinas.
There are 2 primary types of Catalinas, abvertised and unadvertised. All Catalinas require that you scan your store card during the transaction. The store circular will tell you how to get advertised Catalinas. For example it might say “Spend $20 on Proctor and Gamble products and get $10 Off Your Next Order (OYNO).” So if you go to the store and buy the required products, a Catalina coupon for $10 ONYO will print out. While not stated in the circular, it appears that you only need to spend $20 based on the non-sale prices of the items. So if the toothpaste is on sale for $1 but is regularly priced at $2, the $2 counts towards the $20 required spend. Those that are quick with math probably already see the trick here. If you buy 10 toothpastes for $10, you’ll satisfy the $20 required minimum spend, and trigger the printing of a $10 OYNO coupon. Effectively you got those 10 toothpastes for free.
The second type of Catalina is unadvertised. It’s based on what you are buying now or what you have bought in the past, remember you need you use your store card to get Catalinas to print out. Because we have a cat, we buy cat food at the grocery store. 2 weeks ago I received a Catalina that told me of another promotion. Buy 12 cans of Friskies get a $2 OYNO, buy 24 cans get a $5 OYNO. Clearly they are tracking my purchase history as I’ve never received a Catalina for dog food, diapers, or Ex-Lax. They know I don’t have a dog, a baby, and I’m not constipated, though I’ve seen Catalinas left behind for these items. But the coupons they do print out are sometimes quite good. I received a coupon for $1.50 off 1 Classico pasta sauce which is 50% off regular or even better if the sauce is on sale (I theorize that this catalina printed because I bought Ragu in the past). I received another for $1.50 off Ball Park hot dogs, which again is pretty darned good when the hot dogs are on sale for $2.50.
So there you have some more info on how Catalina grocery coupons work. If anybody has anymore information be sure to share.
Jon Deals
I recently found out about another cashback rebate site: Cashbaq. This one seems relatively new to the party but does offer some particularly good percentages on certain sites.
First an overview. I have posted in the past about how cash rebate sites work. Basically the process is you sign up with the cashback site before making an online purchase. Then you find the link for the store you want to purchase at using the cashback site. You click the link, make your purchase, and approximately 60 days later you get a percentage of your purchase back as a rebate.
So here is how I took Cashbaq for a spin. Entertainment.com was (is still maybe) having a special to get the Boston book for $20 with free shipping. Cashbaq offers $10 back per book purchased. So I linked through Cashbaq and got my book for $20, in approximately 60 days I should have $10 back from Cashbaq. As a bonus, they give new members an extra $5 the first time they cashout. So I’ll be getting $15 back from a $20 purchase. Plus I’m getting my 2009 Entertainment book, which hopefully I’ll use more completely this year…
I noticed a few stores that seem to be good cashback deals compared to Fatwallet. Buy.com and Staples both have 3% cashback on Cashbaq vs 1% and 2% on Fatwallet. Priceline (my favorite site for getting cashback) is still a better deal on Fatwallet, however. So have a look for yourself and compare for the places you shop, Cashbaq may offer you a better deal.
Jon Deals
While we probably could have done without it, my wife has been bugging me if we were ever going to get a landline phone. I heard about MagicJack which seems like a really good deal with an entire year of phone service for $40 ($20 for subsequent years). Unfortunately it’s just too unflexible for me. It’s a USB device that you have to plug into a PC and install some software/drivers. Naturally I don’t want some flaky device hooked up to my PC, and just the electricity to set a standalone PC to run it would cost $5-$10 a month.
So I looked into some more standards driven options. Vonage and most of the other big name VoIP providers use a standard called SIP to route telephone calls over the Internet. Unfortunately Vonage $17.99 a month for the least expensive plan. Then I read about how some people are combining GrandCentral(a free forwarding phone number service) with Gizmo (a SIP based competitor to Skype) to give them telephone service completely free (incoming service anyway). Unfortunately for me GrandCentral doesn’t seem to have any numbers available to give to me for free, so I’m SOL there. Gizmo however will sell me a number for $4 a month ($3 a month if I sign up for a whole year).
So I decided to go to the Gizmo route. I picked up a Linksys PAP2t-NA SIP device on EBay and hooked a regular telephone up to it. After some quick configuration (simple but not exactly user friendly) I was able to make a test call to my cell phone. I am quite pleased with the audio quality, which so far is equal or better than an old school regular telephone from the phone company.
So now we have an old school phone number. Still waiting for it to ring…
Jon Budget
