Work Perks

I joke all the time that you should never pay full price for anything, but it's true!  Work discounts can usually offer great deals on random things that you might not instantly think to get discounts on. Travel components, shopping items, phone plans and more.. It never hurts to ask what your company can do for you!

Using work perks, not just for discounts on what your company actually sells, all adds up. Even if you are in some select stores, sometimes just asking "is there a corporate discount?" or "do you do any deals for people working for this or that company?" will work and get you a free cookie, 10% off, or more. My favorite way of wording a discount question is using "family and friends of.."

**It is very important to note that for anything below, always ask and do it properly through/with work, not just taking something or charging back to the company. This is a no-brainer, but just in case... thought to mention it. 

Personally, I've used the "proximity" question at stores (I work across the street, any discount for me if I buy food here from you?) a few times, as well as a few offers from company offered programs. I've also looked into travel help at my work (do we have a corporate discount for flights or car rentals?), which our receptionist was happy to give me.

Some thoughts:

Company-offered/paid into programs, like Perkopolis or WorkPerks/Venngo. I've used Perkopolis to look up goods coupons for online shopping, theme park tickets, hotels, car rentals and more. They also have other deals like house cleaning and services, flower delivery, etc. 

Cell phone plans. Sometimes work will have connections and can get you a good plan rate to reference. 

Flights, hotels and car rentals. My company has a discount on a couple select airlines and as an employee, I can just call, reference our corporate referral code and get a discounts on my personal travel. I know a couple people in our company has also utilized codes like this for personal vacation trips. Your company might have the same, so it can't hurt to ask. 

Supplies, like for office and home. A lot of the time companies will have order lines or discount cards that can be used at stores like Staples or for shipping items. We have discount cards for employees to use at Staples, shipping companies (like UPS), as well as at a couple technology sites through our IT department. 

Whatever your company sells or supplies (dog food from a pet store, shoes from a footwear brand, groceries from a supermarket, etc). This can also extend into the vendors your company may use, which I've done before too, by just asking if they would extend a deal to you because you work for one of their "partners". 

Food. My company once got a message from Swiss chalet that someone responded to, and now we get continuous coupon emails from them, customized "just for us". This is also the best category I've had luck on asking the "proximity" question on. 

Shameless Job-title use if you can. If you are police, fire, government or more, you could always ask if there is a discount for you and your line of work. Be proud of what you do :) 

Finally... Just Ask!

Free is not always free..

You've seen the ads.. "Get your first purchase free!"  "Get this incredible discount on ___ and pay just the shipping!"

Read the fine print. Really. And thoroughly. 

Yes, I've been sucked in a few times, and even though I read a bunch before doing so, I must have missed some key lines each time. My latest oops was for great jogging clothes for cheap that were hidden under a monthly subscription blanket...

But the best example though was this thing called Julep. My blog won't be about product reviews and such, but I'll this company/product to just explain why you should read the fine print. 

Saw an ad about getting free nail polish, easy, no hassle, blah blah. What's the catch. I read and read and basically you sign up for their monthly glamour box and you get your first month free. Interesting. You also get referral points if other people sign up using your code, which is worthwhile if it's a good product. This was a month before Christmas so I thought it could be neat to sign up myself and grandma and mom to get three free glamour boxes and use referral points to then get another free product. If the product was bad I would cancel all three. 

I read the fine print, you can cancel your subscription anytime, or you can choose to "skip my box" if you don't like the selection of items that month. I must have stopped reading there. 

I did it, signed up and my nail polish was in the mail. Then used my referral link to sign up two more people and their nail polishes were in the mail too. Then with all my referral points, I ordered what I could that would be free from the site and got a box of lip glosses and three mini lipsticks. I thought I was pretty clever. 

Then the next month came and there was new fine print. You cant skip your first paid months box. What?! $24.99 a month, and you have to pay this first month after your free month.

We received the products and the colors for nail polish that month were awful. Silver, dark purple and a pink that was pretty much silver too. Colours that didn't impress my grandma or mom. I recently tried the silver as people raved about the quality and within a day it was cracked. The texture was kinda like painting my toes with white out. Yuck. Then, tried the lipsticks and the priming pen made my lips feel like they were going to fall off which didn't feel normal..

Okay, so now to do the "cancel anytime" thing. Julep does not really have any monitored emails or live chat options, so you must call. 5 phone calls over two days later I finally got through to someone who seemed to hate their job. Told them the products sucked and I needed to cancel for myself and two others. He begrudgingly said he would cancel them and I got the cancellation emails. Done, right?

I had read before I bought into the program that others have had problems after cancelling; sometimes they got charged anyways, sometimes it didn't actually cancel etc. I watched my emails.  Sure enough a week later, one of the sign ups did in fact tell me my product had shipped and thanks for my business.. What?!?  I called again and again and finally just emailed their generic email address from Julep. I sent them my cancellation email and told them to not ship and do not charge. They reversed the charges but told us to keep the already shipped product for free as a "sorry". (It never did show up in the mail.)

Morals of this long story?   

1. Read all of the fine print you can find.

2. Google reviews about the company, about the offer, basically what everyone else is saying.

3. Call the company first to understand the offer before you pay/give a credit card. 

4. After your jump in, keep doing the research on the full site. Usually there IS a way to cancel, but a lot of the time it is time sensitive. 

5. If it seems too good to be true, it usually is. 

It never hurts to ask..

I joke about this all the time, but it can never hurt to ask. Ask for a free refill, ask to take the beer glass home for free, ask for a free sample before purchase, etc. 

One case in point, last Friday.

I had an iPhone 5s with Telus that was just limping along and not going to make it. Talked to the Telus store people and they advised to call "Loyalty" and see what they could do. 

I did and spelled out exactly what I was hoping for, citing that I've been a customer for a long time. To my surprise they responded back with basically 3 yes's to my three requests. Bonus!

So then I watched my emails and online and saw that my local Telus store has a sale on right now for the phone I wanted. So last Friday I went in and got one of those fancy new iPhone 6s for $280 (not $900)

Not only that but I asked if they would price match a case that I saw a couple doors down and she pulled some strings to do that. I also got a free spray and wipe, all while still keeping my old and great phone plan. Whoopee!

I probably come across some great deal or freebie daily, simply by asking. I'll ask if there are any current promos, secret unpublished coupons, all while simply being nice. I'll send messages to brands of products I like and tell them I like their product and do they have any coupons so I can keep buying their product. It's about being 50/50 whether I get a yes or no, but I'll take 50% more yes's versus not asking. 

Another case, I had an issue with a contact solution that I've used since I started wearing contacts in grade 11. Rather than just abandoning this solution, I sent an email to customer service explaining what had happened and basically did they have a bad batch in this bottle. After some back and forth (and some great information), they sent me a care package full of 3 full size product replacements (these bottles are $28 each and they sent me 3). Well impressed!

Ask. Simple!

A typical shopping trip

Very quickly, here's the normal shopping trip do's I do!

1. Peruse the flyers. I like paper flyers for the initial deal search, but for ease of price matching, I view and clip the good offers to the Flipp app. All the stores I've been in so far accept the app flyers for price matching. 

2. I will start a list on a piece of paper of the items I want to buy, with additional columns for: "coupon", "price match" and "app rebate". I'll make my shopping list on the one side and then fill in the columns on the other side as I go through the next steps. 

(I had two (3!) totally free items on this list with coupons :) )

3. I'll cross check great deals with my coupon binder. In a few cases I'll have a coupon for the item already on my shopping list and can get a double deal. I'll also add items to the list and do the Flipp "flyer search" for buy one get one coupons or high value coupons ($3 off coupon and maybe the product is on a great sale that makes it $3). 

4. Go through my 6 rebate apps and see what items are offered there that I should jump on. Again, write down any items on my shopping list that catch my eye (like milk). 

5. Again check and see if there's a coupon for any of the app rebate offers. I love when the stars align and I'll have stuff written in every one of the columns for a triple deal!

To be honest, I usually spend about half an hour doing all the above. I try to keep my shopping list rather small, but over $60 worth (you'll see why later). 

6. Shop! With my phone and clipped Flipp offers and my coupon book and my  paper shopping list, I say yes to a shopping cart! I try to shop on Sunday morning, when the Sunday drivers are in church and everyone else is recovering from Saturday night. The lines are short before 11am and the cashiers don't give a whole lot of trouble to you with coupons if there's no one in line behind you. 

This usually takes me 30-45 min to do everything. I'll shop the aisles too looking for clearance items or other sales I might not have seen. I'll take coupons out of the book to use and put them all together in one slot on the first page. Makes the end checking out easier. 

7. Pay. Laying items out on the conveyer is the most stressful moment. I'll usually group things by the column(s) I have on my sheet. Items at full price or only on the app go first, which allows me to tell the cashier that I have price matching and coupons in this purchase. Then, usually just coupons next, item with the coupon on top. Then, price matching items/and coupons. These are showing an item, showing the item on the Flipp flyer, then handing the coupon. While they're reading the coupon, I can have the next Flipp flyer item pulled up on my phone. 

8. Double check receipt. Yep, I'm one of those people who will stand at the end of the cash out aisle looking at the receipt. Doesn't take me long to make sure that all of the full price items came up correctly and that the number of coupons I have on my list equals the number of -$.00 items on my receipt. I put the receipt somewhere easy and home I go!

9. Once home and unloaded into my kitchen, out comes the Neilsen home scanner. Enter the details of who and where, then start scanning items and entering any sale prices. I keep the receipt out to remember everything as I go item per item, and as I put away each product. This takes me 10-15 min to get everything scanned and away. Finish off by putting in the total paid, and then I usually press send on the Neilsen scanner to transmit the data. 

10. The table is cleared of product and only the receipt is left. I'll sit down then and do the rebate apps. If your receipt is over $60, then you can enter the Checkout 51 contest they have every week, and then sometimes a couple apps will give you .25 for receipts over $50 too. I'll scan the receipt for each app, select the items, and I'll usually keep track on the back of my receipt of what I've claimed (.25 milk, .50 bread, etc). Apps usually take a couple days to process and approve your claims, so just scribbling them on the back of my receipt helps me remember what I'm still waiting on (and makes me feel proud that the $60 receipt is actually $59.50 haha). This doesn't take me long at all usually, and every nickle helps. 

I'd say a shopping trip like this is 2 hours, which isn't for me a big deal, especially compared to people who take those two hours just wandering the store for product, who don't price match or coupon. :)

Nielsen Home Scanning program

Companies are all about research, finding out who buys their products and when. Those cash back apps feed back information back to the suppliers, and this Nielsen program is using the same rationale. There have been a bunch of instances where I've seen companies quote stats taken from this system. 

I applied on their website and then waited to see if I was part of a demographic they were interested in. I was and they sent me information to sign up. In the mail came a box with a little unit in it, including a base and a handheld scanner. Plugged the base direct into the router and I was ready to go. 

Basically without going into too much detail, you are supposed to scan and send in your purchases. Every purchase. They have a hundred+ stores in their unit that cover almost every store you could be spending money at. Gas to groceries, pet food to online shopping. They want to know what you buy. 

When you enter a purchase by scanning the item's barcode, it'll ask if you used any deals, options like store sale, manufacturers coupon and more come up. Some stores you shop ask you to input the price of every single item while others just want the total bill at the end. It'll take us few extra minutes to input our purchases before we put them away in the house. The handheld can also be taken with you, in your purse or such, if you are bad at keeping receipts like I can be sometimes. 

Some items that can't be scanned as they have no barcode, you scan a pre-created barcode on a sent sheet. This include stuff like gas, restaurant and fast food, vegetables and fruits and more. I'll admit our house scans the take out barcode far too often!

They run on weekly schedules, so the idea is you send in all your purchases before the cut off day. They are/did run a promotion that if you scan and send in your purchases all 4 weeks of a month they would send you a gift card. This is still ongoing, and a good incentive to stay on top of the day of the week. (I did and got the prepaid MasterCard for $15) :)

Every transmission of purchases earns you points. I think it's 150 points per week if you send in your stuff. All of these points gather in your account to later buy stuff. Their rewards shop looks similar to the air miles one. I believe one of the cheapest rewards on there is at 5000 points, and I'm currently sitting at around 3500 myself :) 

Nielsen will also run surveys and questionnaires to get bonus points. Typically taking 5-10 min to do, you'll get 200 bonus points each. They will also ask about things they are trying, like keeping a food diary for a week (with cash rewards) or opting in to try their new mobile scanning system. More bonus points come from your "anniversary" date each year, with the number of points rewarded going up each year you keep the system. 

No cost, just some extra time. I think it's a worthwhile thing to look into. 

Free product coupons and mail-in rebates

Who doesn't like the word free? Right, no one!

Companies put out FPC (free product coupons) and mail-in rebates in order to get their brand out there and for people to try their product. If the companies are putting the freebies out there, why not make sure you get a piece of the action? 

I try and use all free product offers that I can. 90% of the deals are for great stuff I'll actually use. The other 10% I will get and either "gift" or donate. It makes me feel good to get free, and it's a doubly nice feeling when you can donate items (for me, like dog food trial bags, diapers, shavers, etc) that you didn't have to pay for. 

FPC's and mail in rebate forms are usually in those sample booklets that come around in your newspaper, or direct from the vendor. I'll suggest that you subscribe to a few newsletters where people post the deals there, or follow a couple groups on Facebook that do the same thing. Saves you the effort of searching every day, because your time is valuable!

This week alone, I have 6 mail-in rebates I've sent off, including a hands-fee soap system, a home air effects system, a oxi-clean stain cleaner laundry wash bottle, some nair hair strips and others. 

My only suggestion is to really read the details of mail in rebate offers - make sure you pick up the right product, in the right size, and within the $ (including tax) that they will reimburse for. I've seen products on the shelf for more money than they will pay me back for, so I wait for the item to go on sale. Also, they usually have timelines, that the product has to be bought between and the rebate request received before. I also like to make it the only item on the receipt, which makes it easy at a glance for them to see the total amount. A good rule of thumb too that I've read about is to either photograph or photocopy the items before mailing them out. 

Time is of the essence when it comes to coupons and deals!

Watching a lot of court shows lately and in a court of law, this is an important line to add on any contract. What it means in the law system is that a person can't take their sweet time for years, it means they need to pay back your loan to them as soon as possible.

Couponing is much the same. If you don't make the time to go and buy a good deal, you'll miss out. Case in point, tonight's couple items...

I saw on Saturday that a couple of my e-rebate apps had scrubbing bubbles items on it. One was a buy two SC Johnson products and get $3.00 back and another app had buy any 2 scrubbing bubbles bathroom and get $4.00 back. Combine that with a Food Basics deal for $3.00 a bottle, and that's pretty good. Combine THAT with a manufacturers coupon I printed from online I had for buy one get one free, and now that's a great deal. 

Couldn't bring myself I go out to grab any of these this weekend and went out tonight instead. Well one of the apps was sold out tonight, so instead I got two bottles for $1. Still good, but we all like the idea of being "paid" to take stuff out from the store. 

Another of tonight's deals I missed the boat on was Pledge Floor cleaner. One one of the apps for $7 back a bottle, and I have a manufacturers coupon for save $5 each. Walked down the aisle and ran into a lady who was very excited to see a "fellow couponer" and asked if I was in on the Pledge deal. I said I hoped so and she said, yeah this was her third lap going to different cashiers to get the deal. Of course, when I got to the spot on the shelf she had cleared the shelf of all pledge products. Whomp whomp. 

So, note, another good tip is to make your shopping day either Thursday or Friday, when most of the apps have just refreshed their deals. After the weekend, all the other die hard couponer a have cleared the shelves and the available deals from the apps.