Looks like Swagbucks has changed its coupon approach

So Swagbucks no longer does paper grocery coupons, which is unfortunate. I hadn't been using a whole lot of these lately (and neither has anyone else, which is why they seem to be dying out...), but it was a pretty good deal to use Swagbucks every few weeks to print out coupons, get some Swagbucks for printing them, then get some Swagbucks when you redeem them.

However, at the moment they do have a ton of those "magic receipt" things that are actually worth money. Yes, there are a whole bunch that give you five Swagbucks, so, not really worth it unless you happen to see something you know you've bought recently. But there are also a lot worth 500-3000 Swagbucks. Many of these are the same products that are currently on iBotta and have store coupons. I haven't really scoured the details closely, but it looks like there are several products that could end up being free with the iBotta refund and Swagbucks deal.

(As always, if you don't have Swagbucks yet, please check out my tutorials by clicking on the post label, and please use my referral thingy to sign up so we can both get free stuff.)

These data breach settlements are adding up

 

I just got this one from Yahoo, and last week there was the one from Zoom that went to everyone who used Zoom (even without a paid account) and filled out the form. Even if you don't go searching for class action suits to sign up for, make sure to respond if you get e-mails about ones like these that require an opt-in response. 

I have HelloFresh boxes to give away again EDIT: TAKEN

I have three free-box codes to give away. 

All have been taken. Thanks!

If you are looking for more, freefood often has people post them. Unfortunately most people post pictures of the actual codes, so you have to try them and have no idea if they've been used. People of the internet, please don't do this. Please ask people to comment or message you to get a code. 

FAQ: 

HelloFresh does do vegetarian, doesn't technically do vegan but many receipes are close to vegan with a dairy garnish that can be left off or substituted. The boxes are typically just measured raw ingredients with the rare premade sauce or similar, so you can adjust for allergies, dietary needs, seasoning level.  

You get to pick the meals you receive from a weekly offering of a dozen or so choices. They have a decent variety of Tex-Mex, pan-Asian, Middle-Eastern, Italian-American, upscale American pub fare, and similar.

They are unfortunately almost all hot meals that require access to a stove and oven, so they may not work for people who do not have access to cooking facilities, though check the recipes, as there may still be tortillas, vegetables, cheese, etc. that can be eaten as-is. 

How the free boxes work:

• The e-mail address you are using cannot have a current or past HelloFresh account associated with it, including having redeemed freebies. You will be signing up for a subscription, which you are going to cancel in about a week. 

• You will pay $9.99 in shipping. You need a credit or debit card that can be charged. I recommend using a prepaid gift card (if you do Swagbucks, you probably have many Visa cards for $10, $20, etc.) so you don't risk it charging your actual accounts. The cards say $8.99 in shipping, but free boxes have been coming up at $9.99 lately, so it will likely be $9.99.

• It looks like you can actually get any size box, so you could get three meal kits for six people each. I am not positive this works all the way to checkout though, and have personally only redeemed these for three meals per week for two people. Still, that's a lot of groceries for $10.

• Immediately after you place the order, skip the next few weeks to make sure you aren't charged, then cancel once your box arrives. This doesn't violate the terms, and they even have a cancellation reason of "I was using a free offer" because they know. This company will allow you to cancel on the website without engaging with a human. 

• Signing up may or may not get you Swagbucks depending if you've redeemed a Hello Fresh offer in the recent past. If it does, your HelloFresh box ends up being -$20 or something. Pretty amazing.

First three people to comment with an e-mail address where I can send the codes each get one. Preference for people who are struggling right now, but I don't require proof.

If you don't already have a Swagbucks account, please consider "repaying" me by signing up under my referral link, https://www.swagbucks.com/profile/Locomotive1313, and getting cash back for HelloFresh. 

Method cleaning products misled and deceived me

 

A whole bunch of free Thanksgiving food and other things on iBotta right now

If you don't already have iBotta, sign up here. It's super hit-or-miss, but it's been good lately.

Most of the deals are only available at Walmart, and there isn't one nearby, but you can sign up for a free trial of Walmart+ and get the things delivered for free. When I tried my address (02119 ZIP code), it told me it wasn't available here, but I know my neighbors use it, so I just signed up and placed orders, and it does work. Try putting together an order and going to checkout, and it will show you if delivery is available to you. If it is, sign up for the free trial. BTW, they extend the free trial "just for answering a couple survey questions" and it ends up being about a one-month trial.

The Quincy Walmart doesn't have much of a grocery selection, so select your delivery from Walpole, which does deliver here, amazingly. (I assume Walmart policies are based on parts of the country where a store 18 miles away might be one of the closest ones).

iBotta has kind of a cool plugin for Walmart, where you can browse iBotta deals, click on them to have them show on the Walmart site, and then it will light up the products for which an iBotta deal works. It's actually super cool. There are a bunch of completely free items (and a few that were like -5 cents) -- stuffing mix, gravy packet, cornbread mix, cream of mushroom soup, frozen vegetables, Coca Cola two liter, Izze drinks, and others. There are also some great 50% off or so deals on other items. iBotta also has bonuses where you save more when you do a certain number of deals. The November one requires 48 deals, which is unlikely for most folks to get to unless you have a huge family or are stocking up a business or something, but there are also frequent smaller mid-week or weekend ones, so wait for one of those. 

Completely free $20 for new Outschool users

Yet another product my family enjoys has its very own pyramid scheme, and this one doesn't require you to do anything other than click here to get free $20 in classes. You can then either just take the free $20 and be done with it, or you can refer more people and get free credits as well. 

 

Outschool has live Zoom classes for ages 3-18 on pretty much every topic you could imagine, and appears to have literally thousands of live classes during any given time block. Some of the academic classes we've tried have been hit or miss, but if you're looking for a couple hours of free COVID babysitting, use my free credit and sign up for a one-time social or activity class. There are a million classes on Minecraft, Among Us, Roblox, etc., in addition to the more traditional art and dance sorts of things. I've been using it for COVID babysitting and referring people to get more classes. There's no upper limit as far as I'm aware.

Also, Outschool seems to be constantly hiring teachers, and it doesn't require any qualifications. You can use the same link to sign up to teach whatever interests you.

Free $20 worth of products from Imperfect Foods

Get it by clicking on this link. They make it easy to cancel the subscription or skip a week. It does require a debit or credit card, but I believe prepaid cards work. You get $20 worth of free food and I get $20 worth of free food. Then you can send free food to others, and it's a whole wonderful pyramid scheme of free delicious food.

Lands End is having massive sale on everything

Winter boots are $25 for kids, $35 for adults. Terry robes are $35. Sale is obvious; it pops up and tells you what code to use to get the price.

Don't forget to enter the site through Swagbucks to get 8% cash back. 

ATTENTION: Payless Shoes is back in business!

This may be some of the best news ever for broke folks.

Today and tomorrow they have the canvas Converse-All-Star knockoffs for $9.99 in kids' and adults' sizes.

They don't seem to have snow boots or rain boots in any size. They do have some good-looking plain sandals on good clearances prices for anyone looking to stock up for next year.

The also seem to have less of the stuff cartoons puked all over. Hopefully this continues?

Old Navy has winter jackets for $16-18 today only

Click here. They also have $10 jeans, though not many options.

Also make sure to get 2% back in Swagbucks.

Pop Slots on Swagbucks: free $25 for doing pretty much nothing

The offer is here for 2500 SB. I also saw it kicking around for 2986 or some odd number of SB, but I can't find it. EDIT: Here is the link for 2960 SB.

Go there, download the game. I made sure to go to Swagbucks on the phone browser, thinking this might help make sure it was tracked correctly. Nothing showed on Swagbucks at all for a few days, then I got an e-mail saying I had completed the offer and my SB would be pending.

Completing Level 27 on the game is very easy. The game awards XP for every slot machine win, proportionate to the amount of the win. Go to the Pop Slots Facebook and Twitter page, click into their posts, and pretty much every one has a link that will give you between 500,000 and 2,000,000 chips or coins or whatever they are. Then go to a slot machine, place the maximum bid, put it on auto spin until you run out of money. As you level up, the maximum bids go up, so go in and increase them. You unfortunately can't play this completely passively as far as I know, as the games will go into bonus rounds that require clicking to accept the coins you win after it finishes. I got to Level 26 in probably a total of two hours playing, which I was able to do while working on other things since I just had to click "accept" any time I glanced over and saw a bonus round had finished.

The game also earns you points that give you fairly substantial coupons for hotel stays and bus tours and other travel-related items. I assume the companies are all owned by the same folks. I didn't look too closely, but it looks like they are likely good deals if these were things you already planned on purchasing.

The game itself is a bit boring, though it's also aesthetically pleasing and doesn't have ads. (I mean, aside from how the whole thing is an advertisement.)

Completely free HelloFresh boxes

HelloFresh is back on Swagbucks. You get 1000 Swagbucks for signing up for a plan that includes a percentage off your first several boxes. If you pick two meals per week for two people, the first box ends up being $10.95 including shipping ($40 off). The next box is $30 off, so, $20.95. Then the next two are $10 off, so $40.95.

I set my HelloFresh to send me the first box right away and paid $10.95. Then I skipped several weeks. My Swagbucks credited, which means I got the box for free, or actually a negative dollar or so. (You can redeem Swagbucks to get a $25 Visa gift card for 2175 SB, and then add the $25 to your Amazon account which gets you $25.50, which means 1000 SB = $11.70 using them this way.)

You know how I've mentioned that the cat is an asshole? And how the cat is such an asshole that I made a label just for all the times the cat shows up and bothers things that I'm trying to blog? Well, the cat is an asshole. Seriously cat, no one said you could go and stand on the HelloFresh box and make a judgy face like that.

If you don't already use Swagbucks, my referral link is: https://www.swagbucks.com/refer/Locomotive1313

When I signed up for HelloFresh, it gave me four free boxes (six meals each box) to send to other people. They are actually free, including shipping. You will need a credit/debit card (I suggest one of the Swagbucks Visa gift cards for these sorts of subscription things so you aren't risking it charging your actual bank account) on which it can run a pending charge of a dollar. I still have two free boxes left to send to people. Note: When you click on the e-mail to redeem the offer, it will commit you to receiving the free box for the upcoming week, so don't click yet if you have other plans for next week, and check out the menus here to make sure there are things you want.

First two people to comment with an e-mail address to which I can send an invite will get a free box of six meals. 

Preference for people who are struggling to afford food, can't get benefits or enough benefits, etc. I won't require proof, but please be honest.

$20 puffer jackets and $12 fleece jackets at The Children's Place today only

They're having a massive sale on outerwear today only. And there's a good amount of stuff that's solid colors and didn't have hearts/emojis/camouflage/sportsballs throw up all over it. There are puffer jackets for $20, and solid-color fleece jackets for $12, or the North-Face-knockoff fleeces with the nylon top half for $16. Also girls' snow pants for $20 and boys' for $15. I'm not sure what the difference is, so I'm buying all boys'. Boots and gloves are also priced well. Some of those did have emojis and glitter throw up on them, but it wouldn't be The Children's Place without some of that.

I got just $48.77 for free in less than 30 minutes for messing with some bitcoin thing

I found this over on good ol' Beermoney, tried it, and it works.

You don't have to know anything about crypto or already have any accounts to make this work. Just follow the directions exactly and you'll get free money.

What's the catch?

There's not one. Some investor is starting a new kind of cryptocurrency, and they're giving it away $50 per person in order to have it trading around the internet so it becomes a legit form of currency. As the Reddit poster pointed out, it's already on at least one crypto site that uses PayPal, so you can accept the free currency, send it to the other site, then withdraw into PayPal. Good times.

Playing around with one of these free bitcoin things

This site seems to be the most popular free bitcoin site among the people on forums who know about such things. It doesn't yield a whole lot, because it's not using your computer's CPU power to mine bitcoin; you have to click on it to get a small amount of bitcoin and can click up to one time per hour. I'm just more interested in playing around with bitcoin and seeing if it skyrockets again, but I'm not a gambling type and don't want to risk my actual money in a risky venture. This doesn't cost anything to start though. It's like any of the low-payout clicky sites, and will probably net you a few bucks a week. Good way to get started with bitcoin though if you're interested.

Wheeee more free Amazon money, from different places this time

OK, this is pretty great when things like this just show up in my inbox.

The $100 one, I'm not even sure what it's from. The company name was a pretty generic research project name. I've frequently gotten offers on Swagbucks and MTurk and other places to provide them with additional feedback either to enter to win an Amazon gift card or to get an Amazon gift card. I generally figure, why not, I have a lot of time and not a lot of money, so I might as well help out and see what happens. The thank-you message suggested it was from a survey and was their thanks for my helping them out, not from winning a drawing. Note: I don't do this when it's something that sounds scammy, and I typically don't volunteer my time for market research around consumer products. I will if it's nonprofit-type research.


The $75 one was also a surprise; a friend who works in healthcare patient-experience research posted on social media looking for people who could comment about practices and policies in our various states of residence, and I responded with some personal experiences and a lot of links to pages on state/hospital/university websites that I found on the google. The friend's project director e-mailed and thanked me for the information and asked me what my pay rate was for this type of work. Damn, apparently 1) I've apparently been working in the wrong fields, since I assumed she was looking for volunteer assistance and 2) I apparently need to set pay rates for things! I just responded to him that it took about 30 minutes of work, and I hadn't expected anything for it. He responded with the $75 Amazon card and said he hoped it was enough. Um, OK!

I guess the moral of this story is, be nice. Do things without expecting anything in return, and you may just get something tangible in return. And if you don't, then you still come out ahead. Also, apparently we all need to look into which fields have a ton of money lying around and very different standards in terms of what people are worth. And be sure to set your pay rate.

Oh, and people who are new to having a large portion of your family income be in Amazon gift cards; spend some time checking out what all Amazon sells. They sell damn near everything, and their prices are often the best ones for new items, except for some IKEA and Dollar Tree items. I've bought nonperishable groceries items, hygiene items, office supplies, books obviously, snow boots, other clothing items, electronics, bike parts, cat food, cat litter, etc. I think I'm going to use my current bounty for an actual new printer, or perhaps an actual new vacuum. I am pretty damn handy at fixing printers and vacuums that people have thrown out, but sometimes it's nice to have reliable things for once.

How to get Swagbucks gold surveys to credit when they kick you out

I'm putting this in a separate post, because it's come up a lot.

So, if you do a gold survey that asks you more than basic demographic information and a couple screening questions and then boots you out, put in a help ticket and select "survey error," then summarize what happened and be sure to say they got a ton of useful data without paying you. Say something like, "Spent 8 minutes answering questions about my demographics, everywhere I've traveled by plane, and my opinion about different airlines, before it said I wasn't eligible for their survey. They got a lot of usable data without paying for it." Oh, and gold surveys open in a second tab. Leave the one underneath open so you can go back and see the survey number and number of Swagbucks promised so you have this for your help ticket.

When you get the e-mail, be sure to respond and say it's correct. It often eats the amount of Swagbucks, so fill it in if it's not there.

I've had 100% luck doing this over the past month when they haven't credited. I've done 1-2 per day most days. As always with this stuff, don't abuse it, because they'll ban you, and because they'll take away these type of good-faith measures if people are taking advantage of them. Only fill out a ticket if it does in fact collect a bunch of usable data before booting you

(If only they'd credit my goddamned Capital One card deal though.)

Get six bottles of wine for free

The Bright Cellars offer on Swagbucks is legit. You sign up, they send you six bottles of wine for a total of $53.66 charged to your card (I think that includes state tax, so it may vary), six bottles of wine show up, and then you get 5000 Swagbucks, which you can redeem for about $50-$56 in Amazon or Visa gift cards (depending when you redeem them, what swag ups you have, and so forth).

Compared to the last free wine deal they had, this one gets you six bottles instead of four, but the labels aren't as interesting (hey, I choose my wine largely by if the label is cool) and you don't get to choose the individual wines, or at least I couldn't figure out how. They have you take quizzes and then match you with six bottles they think you'll like. The only customization options I could find were to select that you flat-out don't want chardonnay or pinot noir or whatever. Oh well, it's free wine. I highly recommend doing this. Even if you aren't really a wine person, you'll have bottles of wine to take when you go somewhere for dinner or whatever.

This is a subscription service like most of these, so be sure to put it on your calendar to cancel. The Swagbucks are pending for a month, so I went onto Bright Cellars and selected "skip my next shipment." and then I will cancel once I get the Swagbucks.

Here is the screenshot of the wines it gave me, and how the pricing is supposed to work out. If it's charging you much more, you did something wrong. Also, a photo of the wines. I haven't unpacked it yet, because we're doing some home repairs and our kitchen is taken apart right now. But I assume it's the same thing in the box that the order shows.

This thing about the corkscrew actually made me laugh out loud. What can I say? I'm kind of a 12-year-old boy.

Swagbucks has really been hopping lately; I've been pulling in $25-$50 per week at least

Swagbucks has tightened things up and is actually useful again. They're doing some new things:

• SwagIQ, a live trivia game on Monday-Thursday evenings, in which you can win 3-4 cents just for playing, and up to $50 or so if you get all 10 questions right
• Swago, a bingo board that gets you a ton of bonuses and Swag-ups (power-ups that get you an added bonus on future tasks) for completing various patterns ranging from one line across to the whole board

They're also continually setting it up to be, well, a pyramid scheme inside a pyramid scheme, in that the more often you use Swagbucks and earn, the more you get bonuses and Swag-ups and other things that increase how much you earn when you do the tasks. It's definitely worth it if you are able to spend half an hour or so on it per day.

Here's my Swagbucks routine:

1. Do the daily to-do list, on the left sidebar of the main Swagbucks page. 
2. Go to the Reddit Swagbucks forum to see which "Discover" activities are legit and worth the time
3. Make sure to make my first daily goal each day. This gets me between about 5 and 15 bonus Swagbucks per day when the month is over, and also gets me 300 bonus for completing it every day of the month.
4. Set the SBTV app on my phone to passively earn 10 or so SB. (Do this by adding at least one video to "favorites," set it to play via the favorites bookmark in the sidebar, and then it will play through the playlist passively. It may periodically pull up an add that requires you to manually X out of it to continue.)
5. If you still need Swagbucks after doing Discover, do gold surveys. Also the EntertaiNow and Sport.ly apps are hit or miss, but try them periodically. SB Bowling is not worth it unless you're really good at bowling on your phone. It's something like 1-2 Swagbucks per game unless you can bowl 300, and then you get 25. 

Other things that are good to know:

1. They've been good lately at crediting for deals that don't work properly. If something doesn't show up as pending or doesn't credit you properly, go here and fill out a help ticket. For Discover and shop deals, always take a screenshot of the offer before you try it, and screenshots of everything else relevant. When they e-mail you saying they're just making sure they have the information correct, respond to them. It can sometimes take a few weeks, but in the past couple of months, I have always had them eventually credit me even if the offer didn't track correctly. Also, make sure you aren't using adblockers when doing Swagbucks deals, because it gets in the way of their cookies. Consider using one browser for your Swagbucks and other such things, with all extensions turned off, and a second browser for your normal usage where you can turn on adblockers and all that.
2. If you do a gold survey that asks you more than basic demographic information and then boots you out, put in a help ticket and select "survey error," then summarize what happened and be sure to say they got a ton of useful data without paying you. Say something like, "Spent 8 minutes answering questions about my demographics, everywhere I've traveled by plane, and my opinion about different airlines, before it said I wasn't eligible for their survey. They got a lot of usable data without paying for it." Oh, and gold surveys open in a second tab. Leave the one underneath open so you can go back and see the survey number and number of Swagbucks promised so you have this for your help ticket. Again, when you get the e-mail, respond and say it's correct. They usually credit for surveys within the day.

If you haven't signed up for Swagbucks, please sign up using my referral link. Even if you aren't sure you'll use it, if my posts have helped you scrape by in Boston or elsewhere, please sign up this week so I can get a referral for my Swago board. Thanks!

Please comment with any questions about getting Swagbucks to work better, and I'm happy to answer them.

Hello Fresh allows stacking Swagbucks discount and regular discount to get three meals for $10

Swagbucks has a Discover offer right now that gets you 1000 Swagbucks (about $10, or more if you redeem for cards that are on sale) for signing up for Hello Fresh (which, if you pay attention here at all, you know that you cancel it after the first week once it's no longer steeply discounted). The normal charge for a week of meals is $60, you'll get $10 back from Swagbucks, and if you use the code I have, you'll get $40 off. Most of these deals don't let you enter a promo code if you've gotten there through a referral code, but it works for Hello Fresh. I got my 1000 Swagbucks, plus it applied the $40 discount code I got from a friend.

So, go here and sign up for Swagbucks using my referral code if you don't already have an account, then search for Hello Fresh, find the one with 1000 Swagbucks back for joining (remember to always screenshot the deal in case it doesn't credit correctly), go join and put in your information, then come back here and click through using my code. Or you may have to type it in, I'm not sure. It worked for one person via clicking the link and another person had to manually input it.

As always, comment with any Swagbucks questions and I'll answer them.