GCR Weekly Report

If you shop at Footsmart.com this week through Canadian Great Rebates, you will get 10% in Cash Back Rebates. Plus, until the end of July save 15% Off the purchase of lower body health items with Coupon Code: WBFSS10.

GCR Weekly Report

Great Canadian Rebate is offering 15.0% Cash Back Rebate, save 10% instantly and FREE shipping on orders over $37.00 from Yves Rocher this week. You can check it out here.

GCR Weekly Report

Today is the day before July 1st, Canada Day. It is super quiet in the office. Most of the people is taking the day off. Anyway, let's look at the special from Great Canadian Rebates for this week:

Great Canadian Rebate is offering 5.0% Cash Back Rebate and shipping starting at 3.99 per Order for purchase on Barnes & Noble.com Today. If you are looking to pick up some books, it might be worthwhile to do it within this week.

Reply from GCR

I sent an e-mail to Great Canadian Rebates yesterday about my cheque request yesterday. Within 24 hours, they have replied me. It looks like I won't get my cheque until July 15th, the earliest. Here is the reply from them:

“Greetings,
Cheques are mailed on the 15th of each month, your request was received on the 16th of June and thus will be eligible for payment on July 15th.”

Therefore, if you would like to request the cash back payment by cheque, you probably want to pay attention to your request date and make sure it is before the 15th of the month.

GCR Weekly Report

Great Canadian Rebate is offering 15 Day Free Trial and $18.00 Cash Back Rebate for joining the Privacy Protection Plus Today.

You will be able to get your FREE credit report and credit score by joining Privacy Protection Plus. Also, you'll have a full 15 days to try Privacy Protection Plus FREE. I think it is a great time to find out what your credit score is. Join Privacy Protection Plus, know your credit score immediately, cancel the plan within 15 days, and pocket the $18 cash rebate.

If you are interested, please check it out here.

Prepaid is the Way to Go

Early this year, at the end of January, I switched my cell phone plan to the prepaid service. Now, five months have passed. What is my cell phone bill each month? $4.2!! Yes, you read it right. Now I am paying only $4.2 each month for using my cell phone. Compared with the monthly plan I used to have and pay $37 per month, I am saving $32.8 more each month which adds up to $393.6 per year(about half of my auto insurance annual cost). Not only I am saving tons on my cell phone bill, I am actually getting more features with prepaid service as well, such as caller ID which I have to pay extra to get with the monthly plan.

Although some of you might say why not just get rid of your cell phone completely, it is not an option to me since I need it once a while especially when driving.

If you do not talk a lot on your cell phone, you might want to consider to switch to the prepaid service as well. Keep your cell phone for emergency and occasional use only. If you feel that you really want to talk, pick up your land line or chat using Skype.

GCR Weekly Report

Great Canadian Rebate is offering 50 Free Prints and $9.50 Cash Back Rebate for joining Snapfish Today.

Also, I have sent the cheque request today to them for my cash back, in a total amount of $50.05. Let's see how long it will take them to mail it to me. I will do an update when I receive it.

GCR Weekly Report

Great Canadian Rebate is offering 15% discount on all orders over $99 , plus get 4.5% in Cash Back Rebates on purchase from Foot Locker. Time to get some sportswear?

GCR Weekly Report

Great Canadian Rebate is offering 4.75% in Cash Back Rebates for purchase made on the new Zellers website.

"Zellers is the mass merchandise division of Hbc with locations in communities nationwide. The chain offers customers value, stylish brands, service, price competitiveness and great value through Every Day Low Prices"

Skype Promotion Ends in this Saturday

Skype's promotion for the monthly subscription plan will end in this Saturday(33% off). If you would like to save more, you can join the Great Canadian Rebates to save additional 7%.

I have just used up my Skype credit last night and will be switching to the monthly unlimited calling plan before the promotion end date.

GCR Weekly Report

Great Canadian Rebate is offering 6% cash back for purchase on Chapters.Indigo.ca until end of this week. I have been waiting for this as I want to pick up couples of investment book that I have wanted to buy. Although the rebate is not as high as last time(12%), I still think it is a good time to buy some books.

Happy reading. :)

GCR Weekly Report

I have decided to do a weekly report on Great Canadian Rebate, which is a website that pays you cash back rebates on your online purchases. If you don't know what Great Canadian Rebate is, you can check it out here.

Besides the regular rate of cash back, Great Canadian Rebate runs a promotion called Merchant of the Week, through which you can collect more rebates on that merchant during that week.

For this week, Lens.com is the Merchant of the Week. You save $25 on every purchase over $199, plus earn an 8.0% Cash Back Rebate on Lens.com purchases.

Update On the Hotel Bidding Process

Finally, after bidding for two days, we got our room at DC. It is 4* Convention CTR Renaissance. We got it for $135 per night ($158 after tax). Looks like everything requires a little bit persistent. :)

No Success for Hotel Bidding on Priceline so far

Three of my friends and I are planning a trip to DC for this May Long Weekend. The process of booking flight tickets went flawlessly. We booked the tickets through Priceline for $178 per person, round trip, including tax and fees. With the rebate of $14 from GreatCanadianRebates, the deal is even sweeter.

Now we need to book the hotels for our stay in DC. This has been extremely difficult. I have been bidding up to $110 on Priceline for 4-star hotel in Downtown area without success. People seems to be able to get the same level hotel in the same area for not more than $100 outside the long weekend week. There must be something going on in DC, such as conference, etc. I just don't know what! Well, I have to keep on bidding tonight. Wish me luck! :)

Skype Unlimited Calling

Skype is introducing new monthly subscription to its unlimited calling. There are three plans, $2.95/month for unlimited US&Canada, $5.95/month for unlimited Mexico, and $9.95/month for unlimited World. All plans include voice mail and Skype To Go (unfortunately, not available in Canada).

In terms of call quality, based on my previous experience, it is not superior, but acceptable. As I call overseas very frequently to my family and friends, I think I will try the unlimited world.(Skype is having Save 1/3 when you buy a 3 or 12 month subscription promotion until June 1st as well).

You can find more information here.

Rebate Time again!

The Great Canadian Rebate is offering 5.25% cash back for Canadian Tire purchase this week. Time to buy the CT gift cards and save on gas!

Save with Great Canadian Rebates

The Great Canadian Rebates is a website that offers Cash Back Rebates on almost every purchase and hundreds of online coupons to merchants who will ship to Canadians. It is a very good webiste to save money. It offers cash rebate from 1%-18% on your purchase from the retailers who are partners with them. This includes Canadian Tire(3.33%), Chapters(3.33%), WestJet(1.33%), DELL(1%), Priceline(2%), etc.

I usually purchase Canadian Tires Gift Card through them at 3.33% using my 1% cash back credit card and then use the gift card to buy gas at the Canadian Tire Gas Bar. This way, I save 4.33% each time I fill up the tank of my car. With the Canadian Tire Money being offered, the reward is even bigger.

Also, I just found out that they offer 2% cash back for purchase from Priceline as well. Now I am kicking myself not using it for the trip to Orlando.Otherwise, we could save even more……

I think I should really check into GreatCanadianRebates before I purchase anything online in the future…….

2% Cash Back Credit Card

Most of the credit cards offer the maximum 1% cash back for the purchased made. The highest one I have seen and got is the American Express Gold Credit Card. It was by invitation only before and has just began to accept the application from general public recently. Here is the details:

American Express Gold with 2% Cash Rebate (tiered)

Cash Rebates paid in January (once per year):
$0 - $2,500 = 0.5%
$2,500 - $5,000 = 1.0%
> $5,000 = 2.0% (no need to carry balance to get the 2%)
Added Bonus of 0.5% if you carry balance (so you could get upto 2.5% cash rebates)

Sign up through: 1-800-268-2639.

Credit Card information is not available on the AMEX website

- MINIMUM $30,000 annual income required to apply for this card
- Just remembered, there is also no maximum rebate… the sky’s the limit. i.e. If you spend $200,000, you’ll get $3937.50 back

Cash rewards calculator/comparison:
http://www3.telus.net/CalgaryBen/

Note that since this card is tiered, basically you have to spend more than $6250 per year to get better cash back than the Citi Enrich Card.

I applied for this card a month ago and now just wish more places will accept American Express.

SavingSmart with Great Canadian Rebates

Great Canadian Rebates is currently offering a rebate of $10.50 to join the MemberWorks-SavingSmart membership.

So what is MemberWorks-SavingSmart?

SavingSmart is a shopping club that provides a 5% discount on gift cards/certificates for a variety of national retailers and restaurants, as well as exclusive members-only online savings. Each time when you purchase gift cards from SavingSmart, it will automatically give you the discount.

What retailers are included in MemberWorks-SavingSmart?

You can purchase followin retailers’ gift cards from SavingSmart:

American Eagle Outfitters, Au Vieux, Duluth,Birks, BLOCKBUSTER, Canadian Tire, Casey’s, Certigard Labour Discount, Certigard Maintenance Service Package, Chapters, Cineplex, Coles, Crabtree & Evelyn, Cyberflowers.ca, Designer Depot, East Side Mario’s, eBags.com, Fruits & Passion, Golda’s Kitchen, Home Outfitters, HomeSense, Indigo, Linens ‘n Things, Olive Garden, Petro-Canada Preferred Price Card, Red Lobster, SportChek, Sports Experts, The Bay, The Keg Steakhouse & Bar, TipTop Tailors, VistaPrint, Watch Station, Winners, Zellers.

Among these retailer, what I really like the most is the CanadianTire gift card, as I can use it at the CanadianTire Gas bar. If I am buying the gift cards using my 2% Amex credit cards, I am saving 7% of gas each time. That is just sweet. Also, Zellers is a good one. If you combine the gift card discount with SPC card (SPC offer 10% off for regular and sales items at Zellers), the rebate is even bigger, 17% off!!!

Is there any limit of how many gift cards I can purchase each time?

No, There is NO limit to how many gift cards you can purchase per day or per retailers.

How much does it cost to join SavingSmart?

There is $9.95 monthly membership for SavingSmart. Currently, it is offering 15-day FREE trial. And Great Canadian Rebates is giving $10.50 when you join. So, you have 45 days FREE trial. Since there is no limit of how many gift cards you can purchase each time, you can just grab all the cards you want and then cancel the membership. However, if you buy regularly from the retailers above, I do recommend to keep the memebership because after you cancel, you cannot join again.

Have you joined before?

Yes, I have joined the same kind of membership before. At that time, it was 20% off the face value of the gift cards with a limit of 5 cards each month for each retailer. But that kind of membership is nowhere to find now.

How do I join?

If you decided to join SavingSmart, you need to sign up for Great Canadian Rebates first. Then, do a search on SavingSmart. Click on the link to the SavingSmart website and sign up from there. It is currently the only way to join SavingSmart. There is a bonus of $25 Petro-Canada Preferred Price Card being offered if you join now.

So, have fun shopping